My most commonly used woods are hard maple, cherry, walnut, poplar, red and white oak, and ash.  I've used butternut a few times.

Thanks!!

Always interesting seeing what wood is harder that the wood you are using

Now I know why they say to drill pilot holes for screws in Ipe.

I found out that maple wasn't as hard as it seemed when I tried to sell maple copies of a bubinga prototype mechanically rocking balans chair design of mine.  The scissor members had a 1" bubinga dowel in the side to limit where they traveled.  So when I made maple versions I used a 1" maple dowel instead.   Found out shortly that the shearing action of the chair was crushing the maple dowel.  Had to replace all the dowels with a wider part that distributed the load rather than concentrated it on the side of a round dowel.  Eventually went back and did the same with the bubinga prototype.   Also found later on another projects that bubinga could break across the grain which was a bit surprising. 

https://4dfurniture.blogspot.com/2022/07/rocking-balans-chair.html 

4D

Edited September 21, 20232 yr by 4DThinker