Monterey, I can't say I've used the dowel tool with anything very hard. Works great with POC and poplar. I'm pretty sure it would work with laminated bamboo just fine.
It's a well made solid/heavy weight tool, I think it would be OK for harder woods. I'll have to run some Ipe through it and see how it goes. If it will work with Ipe, I speculate it would work with just about anything shy of concrete.
I'll post my results.