For quite a while I've had an antique swivel chair that needed a leg replaced. Trying to decide what wood the chair was made of in order to make a good matching repair would have been easy for a seasoned cabinet maker, however while I can recognize most types of wood I could not consistently separate similar species like soft and hard maple - I was pretty sure the broken chair leg was of the maple family.
Identifying Wood, by R. Bruce Hoadley (Taunton press, 1990), eliminated my confusion. Sugar maple has denser rays than soft maple when viewed under a hand lens, furthermore, when a saturated solution of ferrous sulfate is applied to red (soft) maple it turns black while the solution turns a greenish color when applied to sugar (hard) maple. With Hoadley's book separating a soft wood from a hard wood become a complete no-brainer in no time! If you are interested in knowing and separating wood species I would recommend getting this book.
By the way, the wood I needed turned out to be soft maple, a not so inferior, but cheaper, wood used for common grade furniture like the chair that needed a replacement leg.
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