I think the various kinds of maple that are out there make it one of the most versatile, diverse, and generally woodworker-friendly kinds of deceased tree raw material for the crafting of whatever seven kinds of what have you that may be on order.

You can get it in ‘hard’ and ‘soft’. You can get it plain or curly. Tiger-striped or quilted. Spalted and ambrosia. What am I missing here. Oh, narrow and wide. Thin or thick. Comes in board stock and slabs. Plentiful. Relatively inexpensive when compared to some others. If maple were ice cream, we’re talking Baskin-Robbins here.

It’s durable because it’s hard, except when it’s soft (species can generally be thought of as hard maples or soft maples, though the actual difference in hardness as measured in the usual way are minimal). 

In some cases, with the plainer looking stuff, you can paint it and not get too hung up on sullying its good nature with opaque coverings of one color or another. Which sort of distinguishes maple (poplar, too!), from something like walnut, say, in which case to slap a coat of paint over top of it should come with an immediate indictment on one count of criminal negligence, one count of malicious mischief, and one count of accessory to being a bear (inside joke).

It’s generally easy to work with, the curly or highly figured varieties can be a bit more challenging but if sharpness and extra care here are your copilots, things usually turn out fine.

So, I think maple is, to use a baseball analogy, for which I’m completely unqualified to do, the utility infielder of the wooden world. Except, actually for its use in making baseball bats. I think Ash has historically been the dominant wood for making these kinds of war clubs, but maple started to be used more in the last couple decades. Not sure why, but I’m pretty sure I read an article or talked to someone in the past about baseball bats made of maple having a much higher tendency to explode grenade-like and send sharp bits of Louisville flying about in all directions in a way that ash simply does not. I should probably research something like this in a little more detail before I start writing about it, but really, I don’t care much for baseball.

But maple, yep. Put me in, coach.