Types of Hardwoods
Regular Post
Written by craig braddick

Is Maple Considered a Hardwood?

Why Is Maple Considered a Hardwood?

✔️ Hardwood vs. Softwood: Hardwood comes from deciduous trees (trees that lose their leaves in winter), while softwood comes from evergreens. Since maple trees are deciduous, they are classified as hardwood.

✔️ Janka Hardness Scale: Maple ranks high on hardness—especially hard maple (sugar maple), which has a Janka hardness rating of 1,450 lbf (pounds-force), making it one of the harder domestic woods.

Types of Maple Wood

1️⃣ Hard Maple (Sugar Maple, Rock Maple)

  • Very dense & strong
  • Used for furniture, flooring, butcher blocks, and bowling alleys
  • Lighter color with a fine, even grain

2️⃣ Soft Maple (Red Maple, Silver Maple, Bigleaf Maple)

  • Softer than hard maple but still durable
  • Easier to work with for cabinetry, musical instruments, and turning projects
  • More variety in color and grain

Is Maple Good for Woodturning? (Since You’re Turning Bowls & Spindles 😉)

✅ Hard Maple: Tougher, great for durable bowls but can be harder on tools.
✅ Soft Maple: Easier to turn, still strong, and takes stain well.

👉 Tip: If you’re turning bowls, soft maple is often preferred for its smoother cutting, but hard maple polishes beautifully and is great for high-end pieces.

Best Uses For Maple Wood

Best Uses for Maple Wood 🌳🔨

Maple is a versatile, strong, and durable hardwood, making it popular for a variety of woodworking projects. It comes in hard maple (sugar maple) and soft maple (red, silver, or bigleaf maple), each with unique characteristics.

1. Furniture 🪑

✔️ Hard maple is dense, durable, and resistant to wear, making it ideal for:

  • Dining tables & chairs
  • Dressers & cabinets
  • Desks & bookcases
  • High-end custom furniture

👉 Why? It’s long-lasting, resists scratches, and has a smooth, even grain for a refined look.

2. Flooring & Stairs 🏡

✔️ Hard maple is a top choice for:

  • Hardwood flooring (especially in high-traffic areas)
  • Stair treads & railings

👉 Why? Maple is dense and durable, making it resistant to dents and scratches, plus it finishes beautifully.

3. Wood Turning & Carving 🌀

✔️ Both hard and soft maple are great for turning!

  • Bowls
  • Spindles
  • Tool handles
  • Decorative carvings

👉 Tip for You (Since You’re Into Woodturning! 😉)

  • Soft maple is easier to turn and takes stains well.
  • Hard maple polishes beautifully but is tougher on tools.

4. Cutting Boards & Butcher Blocks 🔪

✔️ Hard maple is the gold standard for food-safe surfaces like:

  • Cutting boards
  • Butcher blocks
  • Rolling pins & utensils

👉 Why? It’s non-porous, resists bacteria, and won’t dull knives as quickly as some other woods.

5. Musical Instruments 🎻🎸

✔️ Hard maple is commonly used in:

  • Guitar necks & bodies (Fender Stratocasters often have maple necks!)
  • Violin backs & sides
  • Drum shells & drumsticks
  • Piano frames

👉 Why? It has great acoustic properties—clear, bright tones with excellent sustain.

6. Cabinetry & Millwork 🚪

✔️ Maple is often used for:

  • Kitchen cabinets
  • Trim & molding
  • Doors & paneling

👉 Why? Its smooth grain takes stains and paint well, making it great for both natural and finished looks.

7. Sports Equipment 🏀🏒

✔️ Maple’s toughness & shock resistance make it ideal for:

  • Bowling lanes & pins
  • Baseball bats (many MLB bats are hard maple)
  • Hockey sticks
  • Gymnasium floors

👉 Why? It’s impact-resistant and holds up to heavy use.

Final Thoughts: Why Choose Maple?

✅ Extremely durable & strong (especially hard maple).
✅ Beautiful grain—can be left natural, stained, or painted.
✅ Versatile—great for fine furniture, floors, turning, and more.
✅ Readily available—a top choice for both professionals & hobbyists.

Hardwoods Mesa by Timber Woodworking

Timber Wood Working offers hardwoods in Mesa, Arizona. We specialize in woodworking tools, equipment, and supplies for commercial woodworking cabinet shops or furniture manufacturers as well as the home shop hobbyist. Contact us today, or call if you should have any questions.

Hardwood
0
Best Hardwoods for Cutting Boards
Regular Post
Written by webtechs

Best Hardwoods for Cutting Boards

If you love spending time in your kitchen, one of the greatest tools you can utilize is a hardwood cutting board.

Amazingly enough, wood can have more sanitary advantages than plastic when prepping food. Below is the best species of hardwood for a cutting board (also known as a chopping board), considering their qualities, food safety characteristics and maintenance.

What’s the Best Type of Wood for Cutting Boards?

There are a lot of good wood types to decide from for a top-quality cutting board. One reliable indicator of finding out which hardwood constitutes a good cutting board is to see what its hardness rating is.

The Janka scale, or hardness rating, is how unyielding wood is to depressions, wear and tear.

Maple may be deemed the best wood for cutting boards. Maple cutting boards are not going to dull knife blades, however, are resistant scratches. This type of wood is usually more cost effective since it is native to North America, growing in (occasionally) harsher settings such as the Midwest, leading to a larger supply of it. Cutting boards made from Walnut can also handle a great amount of knife usage.

Things to Think About When Choosing a Cutting Board

A vital element when choosing a kind of wood for a cutting board is food sanitation. Three significant traits establish whether or not a hardwood species is thought of as food safe.

Porosity

Porosity is in reference to the sameness of a wood to “soaking” in liquids. Larger pores allow bacteria and mold to grow. Butternut wood, Oaks, and Mahogany are very porous and are not recommended for preparing meals, particularly when preparing meat that is raw.

Grain

Closed-grain woods are additionally associated with pores. Smaller pores mean these types of woods are the preferred decision for food use.

Toxicity

Some woods such as rosewoods, birch, and pine are not for food prep. They discharge oils and sap that are unhealthy for humans to consume with food.

Maintaining Your Hardwood Cutting Board

Using any top-quality hardwood, there is some maintenance required for your cutting board. After every use, use a mild dish soap and wash each side of the board. This hinders warping. Do not put a wood cutting board in the dishwasher – It is going to crack and warp from the different temperature changes and extreme moisture! (Regrettably, if deep cracks or splits begin to form, it’s time to make or buy a new one.)

It’s also suggested to treat the cutting board with food-quality mineral oil routinely. Doing so keeps the wood hydrated, extending the life of the board. Such practices also show the natural luster and aspects of the hardwood. Stay away from specific oils, such as coconut and vegetable oils (the natural odors of food oils are going to seep into the wood), and alternatively, stay with mineral oils or beeswax/mineral oil blends.

When using mineral oil, begin with a couple drops in the center of the board. Rub the oil in a circular outward motion, making sure the oil gets into each crevice throughout the boards surface. The wood is going to soak up the oil, so it’s perfectly fine to add more as you rub it in.

Woodworking Tools Mesa by Timber Woodworking

Timber Wood Working offers softwoods in Mesa, Arizona. We specialize in woodworking tools, equipment, and supplies for commercial woodworking cabinet shops or furniture manufacturers as well as the home shop hobbyist. Contact us today, or call if you should have any questions.

Hardwood, Woodworking Projects, Woodworking Tools
0
Hardwood vs Softwood
Regular Post
Written by webtechs

Hardwood vs. Softwood

Different projects require different kinds of wood, and a lot of us are going to have come across the words ‘hardwood’ and ‘softwood’.

But what are the differences between these two kinds of wood? How can you differentiate them? What are the primary uses of each? Keep reading…

What Is the Difference Between Hardwoods And Softwoods?

Hardwoods and softwoods are defined by the trees they are harvested from. Hardwoods come from angiosperm species; mostly deciduous, they have broad leaves that fall every fall season. Softwood comes from gymnosperm trees, such as conifers. These have needles that stay evergreen all year long. Since hardwood trees grow slower than softwood trees, their wood is typically stronger and denser.

What Are Hardwoods?

Hardwoods are from trees classed as angiosperms that reproduce with a flowering plant, such as oak, maple and walnut. Located in tropical and temperate forests throughout the world, hardwood trees are mostly short lived, with wide leaves that switch color and fall down in the colder months. All these leaves have a system of fine veins.

The configuration of a hardwood is usually more complex than that of a softwood. Naturally, they grow slower than softwood trees — they can take up to one hundred and fifty years prior to being ready to harvest — which leads to the wood harvested from them being denser, heavy, and long lasting.

The term angiosperm transcribes as ‘enclosed seed’ — the tree’s seeds are encased in an ovule, like a nut or fruit. The seeds do not spread as easy, resulting in hardwood trees usually being more bunched together.

What Are Softwoods?

Softwood comes from gymnosperm trees, such as conifers (evergreen). These trees — such as spruces, pines, and cedars— have needle-like greenery that typically stays green all year, as opposed to broad leaves that fall in the autumn. Softwood trees grow quicker than hardwoods, typically taking around forty years prior to being ready to harvest. This quick-growing nature has an inclination of making them less dense than their equivalents.

The word gymnosperm transcribes from Greek basically to mean ‘revealed seed’; this is due to the seeds from these trees — like pinecones — are not encased in an ovule. They have no type of casing. Meaning they’re able to spread a lot more easily and quickly than hardwoods, oftentimes even because of wind.

Hardwood Vs. Softwood: Strength

As the name suggests, generally, hardwoods are stronger and more durable than softwoods. This is because of their slower growing time and more convoluted, compressed structure, resulting in greater density of the harvested wood. Generally, higher density comes to higher strength and toughness.

Hardwood Vs. Softwood: Durability

Due to their more complex, compressed structure, hardwoods typically perform better when exposed to the elements, in addition to having superior resistance to fire. Softwoods that are intended to stand up to the elements — like garden furniture — are typically treated, or ‘tanalised’, to enhance their exterior performance. Each of the hardwoods and softwoods are going to weather to a silverish-grey when left untreated.

Hardwood Vs. Softwood: Cost

Because they grow faster, easier to source and resulting in more abundant, softwoods are typically considerably less costly than hardwoods. Nevertheless, the price of any given hardwood or softwood is subject completely on the product and species selected, in addition to, of course, the amount required.

Some kinds of softwood are specifically favorable for certain applications resulting in their appearance and robustness — introducing Western Red Cedar. Therefore, these may go for a higher price than less-in-demand hardwood equivalents!

Hardwood Vs. Softwood: Workability

Generally, hardwoods are more complex and time consuming to work with and machine. They also typically don’t take paints, finishes, or other treatments as easy as softwoods. First-rate devices are needed to work with woods with a higher density.

Hardwood Vs. Softwood: Impact On the Environment & Sustainability

Both these types of wood remove carbon dioxide and are one-hundred percent sustainable, but softwood is typically more friendly to environmentally alternative. This is simply due to these trees growing faster than their hardwood equivalents, meaning they can be replenished quicker. Nevertheless, by sourcing wood from sustainably controlled forests, have no doubt that hardwoods can be very kind to our little planet, as well.

Woodworking Supplies Mesa by Timber Woodworking

Timber Woodworking offers hardwoods in Mesa, Arizona. We specialize in woodworking tools, equipment, and supplies for commercial woodworking cabinet shops or furniture manufacturers as well as the home shop hobbyist. Contact us today, or call if you should have any questions.

Hardwood, Softwood
0
Woodturning Projects for Beginners
Regular Post
Written by webtechs

Woodturning Projects for Beginners

Improve your woodworking skills while making masterpieces with the following learning-oriented projects.

Few tools place as much intimidation into the minds of novice and advanced woodworkers alike as the common wood lathe. Nevertheless, this hesitancy is mostly misguided, as lathes are all hat and no cattle. Whereas it’s not an easy skill to master, don’t let the significant size, the harsh sound or the sight of airborne wood chips hinder you.

Woodturning Projects

Since your creativity is the only restriction on what you can make with a lathe, below are only some of the best beginner woodturning projects to help you get your feet wet.

Bowls

Bowls are among the best woodturning projects to build fundamental skills with since you can make them as basic or intricate as you wish. Larger projects on the lathe are usually harder to complete, so you can begin with small bowls and move up from there.

Wooden Bracelets and Bangles

Wooden bracelets and bangles are potentially the best beginner woodturning projects since they’re somewhat large and they finish stunningly. Sanding is just as much a component of woodturning as is common woodworking, and bracelets offer an excellent way to hone your skills on curved wood.

Candle Holder

Candle holders are a perfect project to experiment with once you are ready for medium-sized projects. Even though these holders come in all sizes and shapes, you can utilize the lathe for creating tall stems with swoopy curves that make for gorgeous centerpieces.

Wooden Spoons

Wooden spoons are an excellent way to show off your skills in addition to the natural beauty of the wood since they offer differing perspectives on the grain considering that it’s handle is cylindrical, and the ‘bowl’ portion of the spoon is flattened.

Handles for Anything and Everything

Woodturning is a favorable skill that you can usually use to enhance existing DIY hobbies—or even common activities such as gift-giving by adding a personalized touch with custom-turned handles. As with all the projects on this list, you can begin creating handles with as much basicness or refinement as you can, which makes them perfect for beginning and assessing your progress.

Rings

Rings, comparable to bracelets and bangles, have somewhat simple designs and are suitable for practicing since they don’t require large amounts of material. Nevertheless, rings are a little harder to produce than bracelets since they are smaller and involve more precision, making them amongst the small woodturning projects that are perfect for honing control of your movements.

Wooden Beads

Comparable to rings, wooden beads are a praiseworthy choice for beginners since small woodturning projects are generally easier. They’re also a lot less expensive should you make a mistake, which, at the end of the day, is what you’re supposed to do while you’re learning.

Round Boxes

Boxes might not be the first thing that you think of when thinking of wood lathe project ideas since they are usually square, but that’s precisely what makes round-turned boxes so unique. Round boxes are perfect projects for novice and average skilled turners to undertake since the fact that the box and its lid must fit snugly together means making them an exercise in your dimensional symmetry skills.

Drumsticks

Drumsticks, although simplistic, are a good project for those interested in improving their woodturning skills since both singular pieces must be almost identical in shape, weight, feel and size. Additionally, drumsticks typically have a small taper, giving them a reachable and pleasant element of difficulty.

Wooden Plates

Another beneficial woodturning project for novice and average turners is making wooden plates. The method of making a plate is comparable to creating a bowl, but requires a little more precision in most situations, making it a reasonable advancement from turning a bowl.

Wooden Vase

Wooden vases are favorable woodturning projects since they’re functional and attractive. Nevertheless, before you undertake a large-scale vase, aim to make some smaller ones first; large vases are among the more difficult woodturning projects and are time-consuming.

Rolling Pins

Rolling pins are a must for the community that is woodturning, and for good reasons. They are useful, somewhat easy to make and are perfect for exhibiting the natural flow of the wood’s grain.

Cups

Cups are great for a beginner project since they have a plethora of uses and are somewhat simple to make. Maybe you want a cup to drink your afternoon tea out of or a holder for your writing utensils, a wood-turned cup gets the job done and at the same time looks attractive.

Goblets

Maybe the only thing greater than drinking out of a majestic goblet is taking a drink from one that you made on your own. Fortunately, making a goblet using a lathe isn’t too challenging and the process provides a multitude of chances for you to strengthen specific skill sets.

Lamps

Lamps are among the most difficult lathe projects a novice or average can try. Even though lamps can be as small or large as you wish, you’re probably going to want to take the chance to display your skills. Gorgeous lathe-made lamps have distinct, exquisite shapes and a polished feel.

Hardwoods Mesa by Timber Woodworking

Timber Woodworking offers hardwoods in Mesa, Arizona. We specialize in woodworking tools, equipment, and supplies for commercial woodworking cabinet shops or furniture manufacturers as well as the home shop hobbyist. Contact us today, or call if you should have any questions.

Hardwood, Woodturning, Woodturning Projects
0
Types of Hardwoods
Regular Post
Written by webtechs

Types of Hardwoods

In the method of identifying hardwoods, things can get a little overwhelming when faced with the hundreds of possible species. Yet in the setting of everyday hardwoods that a lot of people in the US or Canada are likely to come across, the list of potential woods is typically much shorter.

Below is a list of the more common types of hardwoods:

  1. Oak Hardwood

This hardwood is everywhere! Likelihood is, there’s something made from this hardwood steps away from where you’re presently sitting. It’s used for desks, flooring, furniture, doors, wainscoting, and almost anything else that can be made of wood! It’s often stained a medium reddish-brown color, so it might look slightly darker than raw oak.

  1. Maple Hardwood

This light-colored hardwood is seen just about as frequently as oak, and is typically not stained a darker color, but is kept a raw whitish-cream or often stained in amber yellow. It’s common in furniture, flooring, wainscoting, and in areas in which a pale, lighter-colored hardwood is needed. Quartersawn pieces with a speckled look are typically found in butcher blocks and countertops.

  1. Walnut Hardwood

The real deal. Walnut is unequal in that it is one of the only hardwoods that is naturally deep, rich chocolatey brown (though it could be somewhat lighter too). It is hardly ever stained, and is very favorable for making furniture. It is also not rare to see walnut utilized in laminated pieces too.

  1. Cherry Hardwood

The astute reddish-brown look of cherry is typically noticed on trim fine and furniture. It’s also not rare to see cherry used in laminated pieces too. Besides Black Walnut it’s one of the prime hardwoods in the US. It is occasionally stained just moderately darkish to give it an older look.

  1. Birch Hardwood

Most seen as plywood. Birch additionally tends to appear in millwork and furniture too.

  1. Poplar Hardwood

This is a budget friendly utility hardwood that’s utilized in numerous applications, like upholstered furniture frames, veneers, and can also be stained to match other more expensive hardwoods.

Hardwoods Mesa by Timber Woodworking

Timber Wood Working offers hardwoods in Mesa, Arizona. We specialize in woodworking tools, equipment, and supplies for commercial woodworking cabinet shops or furniture manufacturers as well as the home shop hobbyist. Contact us today, or call if you should have any questions.

Hardwood
0