What wood for teaching?

[MikeG.]

It will be redwood.

Take a chisel to the endgrain. Try to take a clean shaving off the entire width. Cut a short length in half long-ways and make some dovetails, paying close attention to the chiseling. It can be done, but it is damn near impossible to get right without hauling out chunks, or rounding-over the spongy surface/ edge. It absolutely has its place, and as I say, it's all I used for the first ten years I was doing woodwork, but I think that chiseling skills are best learnt on something else.

 

[Harbo]

Beech is a nice, generally uniform wood that’s not too bad to work with.

Rod

 

[Chris152]

I tried a piece using a section of tulip just once and found it really uninteresting, and ended up using something else instead. As a newbie, there's something very seductive about grain and maybe that's worth thinking about when working with beginners?
That said, I picked up this piece of tulip today, I reckon it'll look great once it's finished properly.

 

[johnnyb]

C16 carcasing is usually spruce. Which is not a great wood especially for handtools. It's dry and brittle. As is American white oak. In fact most of the woods from America are kilned to death and bullet. Mahogany was a handtools favourite search some out. Top grade redwood not to resinous though.
For me availability was really important. Going to a fancy timber yard was a pain mostly. So I've made many things from spruce. Also to me creativity meant making stuff the size I wanted ,not the size of par.
A planer thicknesses was my go to weapon.