Hard maple vs soft maple

[dennis thompson]

I am making some file cabinets The drawer sides call for maple, should I use hard or soft maple?
Thanks
Dennis

[Stan Urbas]

Hard will wear better

[Fred Hargis]

A lot of folks would use poplar for the drawer sides, and I suspect it's very close to soft maple in hardness. I'd probably use whatever I could get the cheapest. Soft maple often has some coloring and mineral streaks, so if the clean white appearance is important, you may want to stick with the hard maple.

[Prashun Patel]

Soft maple is a little cheaper than hard. Hard is typically whiter and more even in appearance. Soft can be pinkish and grey in parts which can make for color issues.

I also vote for poplar or birch on the sides. Cheaper and cleaner.

[Jim W. White]

In my experience, soft maple is still much harder than poplar and should be more than adequate for drawer sides. The only exception I can think of would be Silver Maple which I found to be very soft. I would not spend the extra money on hard maple just to be used in a secondary location. I've found hard maple to be considerably more difficult to machine (compared to soft maple) particularly in relation to joinery.

Poplar is perfectly acceptable secondary wood but I find the green and purple coloration differences much more distracting than the heartwood/sapwood differences in soft maple.

my 2 cents,

Jim in Idaho

[Lee Schierer]

I am making some file cabinets The drawer sides call for maple, should I use hard or soft maple?
Thanks
Dennis

If you plan on using metal slides to support these drawers then any hardwood (birch, poplar, maple, walnut, cherry etc.) will work. Hard maple is harder to work with than soft maple or poplar. You will need pilot holes for any screws you put in and it is prone to burn marks when cut or routed. If you plan on using the sides of the drawers as the slide then you will want to use maple (either hard or soft) to obtain the longest service life.

[Jeff Willard]

Poplar will be more stable than either maple.

[Peter Quinn]

Poplar will be more stable than either maple.

Maybe yes, maybe no. I know poplar is a theoretically stable wood, but I have seen it go around corners, down the street, and wind up at the pub drunk! And maple wears much better if the sides are facing friction in any way. Poplar is not high on my list of species I trust to stay put as I have seen bits and pieces of it go crazy over time.

[Gary Curtis]

Because I bought a lot of soft maple on sale, I made my WWing bench base out of that material. A pleasure to work with. Made nine drawer sides using it and was happy with it.

Gary Curtis