Thanks for the reply.

My two tables are the readers digest version of actual ERP software tables. I didn't bother stating primary keys or NOT Nulls.....(sorry)

Both machinetime and labortime (you thought should not be numeric) are in fact numeric. They simply store the total time (in hours) it takes to to something.

I was hoping in my posting to learn something about CTE - I researched online found some samples - but everything was a single table.

I'm pretty confident I could write a CTE to deal with table1 (Bills of Materials) - i just can't visualize how I could use the results to make a calculation (summary) of the records in Table2 and return those records. Would a join work?

I don't have the luxury of creating my own tables.

I'll keep plugging away and maybe stumble upon a solution. I do appreciate your time - I am a SQL novice - I am totally self taught and thus, not well educated - I don't typically have to perform challenging tasks such as this.

I always try to respect the spirit of this forum by researching and attempting solutions before posting.

This forum has been great to and for me.

Typically I only have to create views, simple triggers and occasionally a simple stored procedure.

Most of your reply is way over my head, especially the utilization of .lft and .rgt.

Thanks again - I'll keep researching........