Not everyone feels the "need" to use difficult wood, unless to show off.
For some folks, difficult wood is the only thing available locally. To me the Pacific Northwest is full of easy to work wood. Many of the firs are easy to work. The woods like poplar and alder are also usually easy to work. Even though poplar and alder are considered hardwoods, they are not hard like maple, oak, ash or walnut. They are certainly not difficult like the lumber grown down under. With all the rain we get here the wood grows much faster which seems to add to the ease of working.
Some of my early work was done on harder woods. That was mainly because my job was selling paper and the shipping pallets were usually made from eastern hardwoods. The wood was seconds at best and difficult to work. My early days of woodworking required my scavenging and dismantling pallets for building material.
jtk
Last edited by Jim Koepke; 12-08-2019 at 2:00 AM.
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)