Soft maple is used for furniture, kitchen cabinets, paneling, moldings, doors, musical instruments, and for turning. Drying soft maple adds to the woods worth by increasing its bending strength, crushing strength, stiffness and hardness. The use of kiln dried soft maple is also becoming more popular for use as a structural lumber.

Where Soft Maple Comes From

Also known as the bench drill or pillar drill, the drill press is a valuable addition to any woodworking workshop or metalshop. It has higher accuracy than either hand drills or portable electric power drills and can drill holes to depths of up to 6 to 10 inches.

Woodworking benches should be a basic part of any home wood workshop, but they go all the way back to Roman and Greek times; they can be seen in images from these eras being used by carpenters and other workers. No mechanical vises were no used in those times, but holdfasts or pegs driven into holes in the benchtop held pieces being worked.

For wood workers, maple is one of the most beautiful woods for making furniture, flooring, woodwork, and musical instruments. It has beautiful grains in varied patterns.

There is one problem with maple wood, however. It is very hard, and does not take stain very well. In fact, in many cases, stain when applied tends to soak into some spots and resist others, resulting in a mottled or spotty look that is not at all what the woodworker intended.

Sandpaper is an abrasive-coated flexible sheet used in woodworking for giving a fine or rough finish to individual work pieces, large surfaces such as flooring, or smaller local areas such as a sticky window frame. They are used both by hand and in power tools, and are available in a number of different materials.