Janka Hardness Scale-what is it?

Janka Hardness Scale

In order to help customers navigate their way securely thru the many options available to them when they choose their floor coverings or hardwood flooring like in this case, one of the many metrics used today is a measure form called Janka Hardness Rating, or scale.

What is it?

The Janka hardness test measures the resistance of a type of wood to withstand denting and wear. It measures the force required to embed an 11.28 mm (0.444 in) steel ball into wood to half the ball's diameter. This method leaves an indentation. A common use of Janka hardness ratings is to determine whether a species is suitable for use as flooring. As so aptly described here by wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janka_hardness_test .
If me and You were engineers, (we are not), we would measure that force required, and than determine which Hardwood Flooring is harder.

For that purpose we commonly use this Rating - Scale - Chart.

Here is some charts I took from the web, some are more descriptive than others...Some are more colorful than others.
In this chart you see Higher Ratings toward the bottom...a bit counter intuitive if you ask me..
 Red oak is considered the standard and it gives us a result of  1,290 on the Janka scale, and is considered to be the standard. White oak is a little harder coming in at 1,360. Bamboo is also harder at 1,380 and Maple shows a rating of 1,450.<
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Here is another interesting picture, and it tells the story very effectively:
In this particular chart you see that harder woods are set up at the top of the chart.
Did you notice? Most if not all of the hardest woods in the world come from South America.
The popular Brazilian Cherry is 2,350 - almost twice as hard as red oak. And, Brazilian walnut 
also named Ipe, comes in at 3,684 - nearly triple the hardness of red oak.