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I've had a maple board for roughly 15 years. Best I remember, it was kiln dried. I have always assumed it was sugar maple (or hard maple). A co-worker recently bought some some soft maple and he said it's difficult to teel it isn't hard maple just by looking. This makes me wonder.......can I determine if my board is hard or soft maple?

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Formerly known as Adaboy.......

One is harder and heavier than the other. If a small chunk feels like a concrete bock...it's hard.
Kent

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If it dents easily with your fingernail, it's not sugar maple.

Chuck

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Yup, a firm hard push with the thumbnail will tell.
Mark? Soft.
No mark? Hard.
Coe FRanklin

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Give me 50 cents worth of regular.
Check my oil too, if you don`t mind,,,

Ok, I can't dent it pushing into the board with my thumbnail.......but I can mark it if I slide my thunbnail across it using a lot of pressure.

What does that mean?

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Formerly known as Adaboy.......

Means that I need to find out how you get your nails so hard.

Sugar maple is pretty white compared to red. There are some pretty hard red maples, so the fingernail test is not a perfect test.

Is all soft maple, red maple? Or could it be silver maple? Doesn't seem like silver maple would be as hard as red.

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Formerly known as Adaboy.......

Bigleaf maple is probably the most common used for instruments. A lot of the stuff I have would require pretty solid nails to make a mark. I'd be interested in how the two could be easily identified?

according to the encyclopedia of wood red and silver maple both produce soft maple.

red maples sap and heartwood are indistinguishable and apparently rock/sugar maple will sometimes have dark brown heartwood. so thats one way. also they have different weights rock/sugar at 45lb/ft3 and soft at 38lb/ft3. i dont know if this is big enough a difference to measure in smaller samples but thats a couple ways you may be able to tell what you have.

In general red is harder than silver maple, but I have my red maple in piles of soft, medium and hard. I have some that is nearly as hard as sugar, but not quite.
I'm sure bigleaf varies quite a bit too, but most of what I have is soft. It's quilted. The way I can tell bigleaf is it takes forever to sand.

I disagree with some of these posts. In my opinion, you cannot tell
one maple from another by pushing your nail into it.

Can you post a photo or two?