Don’t try and fit the screws without pilot holes as the maple is hard and you can damage or even break off the screw heads if you try it without holes.
I don't know about Simon, but more than couple of us here have learnt this the hard way ...

I was lucky and the head twisted off leaving just enough screw to grab with some flush end nippers to back it out, then eventually to a point where I could get pliers on to it.
I've seen others that weren't so fortunate and ended up having to drill multiple holes around the broken screw to extract it, then drill out the little holes to make one big one, plug that hole and drill for the that little barsterd screw again!

So the take away is... pilot holes!