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A friend in town has a brother-in-law who is a manager at Taylor guitars, 6-8 years ago he got a semi-custom small guitar in really beautiful unstained figured maple. Great sounding guitar but he has always felt it wasn't loud enough.

He decided on a new guitar, so his BIL helped design just what he wanted - custom from the bottom up. This one is also unstained figured maple, but bigger, perhaps a 16" lower bout. He wanted a torrified sitka top, but the designer (whose name I forget) said that it does not match the Taylor aesthetic to have a darker top. The solution was to torrify the back and sides. This was the first guitar they buiilt with torrified back and sides, and they were reluctant to out the sides through the bending machine, so they bent them by hand - turned out just right.

The maple now looks like it has been died with tea - just an even browning all over. It is quite nice looking. The guitar is very powerful and even. My ears are not good so I can't be more specific.

So a question - have any of you torrified back and sides?

Ed

Not torrified and not me, but I remembered this from Grant Goltz, may be of interest - http://luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=46437&p=614465&hilit=oven+back+sides#p614465

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

I have done a few and one of them was Maple.
I think that you will notice a lot less of the sound you get from when you do the top. If it another recipe to add and use in your building. There are different companies doing this and there is more than one technique. I can only speak of the martin stuff and a few pieces I have found on line. most are using RF kiln and inert gas ovens.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

?

seriously?

somebody at Taylor Guitars actually said this?

times change things I guess...

I custom ordered a 655ce in '96 and specifically stated I wanted a dark set of maple used (had been a carpenter for over 10 years at that point, and also had a cabinet maker/furniture maker friend who had a 12x12 shed full of flamed/quilted/bird's eye maple and knew for a fact that darker pieces of maple existed)...just happened to call the factory to check in on progress and was told they were going to stain it the next day...WTF???? I went a tad ballistic...received the guitar and noticed that the piece used for the florentine cutaway was from a different tree and looked totally different, the wood was very typical light maple, and too boot you could actually see light through the back (which rather implied they had already stained it then sanded it off)...the top was definitely fairly darker than the maple...the person I talked to at Taylor seemed to think this was no issue...uh huh...so I wrote a rather long rant to Kurt Lustig C.O. T.J. Baden (whom I knew from San Jose's Guitar Showcase and who was instrumental in pulling me away from a Martin all koa guitar in '85 and got me on the phone with Bob to custom order a K-20ce without the Taylor logo on it instead having an inlay in its place) and eventually got the proper guitar I desired, a nice honey colored piece of maple with very nice quilting...

reminds me of said K-20 when it started badly reacting to the humidity of Santa Cruz and required a neck reset, and they sent it back with the dreaded hump at the body making playing into the cutaway area rather difficult...can you all believe that I (still in college with very limited wood working experience) actually had to tell them to put a *edited* wedge under the extension to keep the fretboard in a straight line??? they acted like they had never heard of such a (completely logical) solution...

whatever...

let's face it, we are all fairly used to seeing the classic look of dark sides/backs with a spruce top (historically speaking rosewood or hog), and I agreed at that time...these days I've seen so many wood combinations used here or there that nothing really shocks me anymore, and let's face it the real issue is sound and playability!

Torrified no, but I do 'cook' my tops and backs. (I figure the heat from bending takes care of the sides. I suppose I end up with something in between raw and torrified.)

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

Bourgeois guitars offers an all torrified version of a Drednaught- back sides neck bracing and bridge plate. They have a sound clip on their site. I've built several with aged tops. But not with back and sides.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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"It is easier to fool a man, than it is to convince him that he has been fooled"
Mark Twain

Although my experience with heat treated wood is limited, I will say that one constant I've noticed with it is that it really tends to split. FWIW

It sure does! I was making a bridge out of a piece of "torrefied" wood, and the wing broke off when I was filing it to shape. I was barely even pushing down on it. Tossed it and started over with something not treated.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

there is no doubt torrification does change things but not all torrification process are the same. Heating wood to bend it and cooking tops isn't torrification. I have done over 10 guitars with torrified tops what I did notice is they are a lot more stable than raw wood but the require a different gluing technique.
I don't think I would use a torrified bridge or fretboard.
I have used maple and spruces along with brace stock. It is indeed interesting.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

Torrefaction breaks down some of the hemicellulose, the part of the wood that absorbs and releases moisture with humidity changes. I have baked a few tops and back and sides. Easy to crack the sides when bending with a heat blanket as it is hard to feel what the wood is doing. I have a maple body I am working on that is baked but with photobucket's new policy the pictures are not available but I plan to get them up on another site. When I was learning about the process I did a nice piece of oak and overdid it, it crumbled when I tried scraping the wood.

I have used torrefied maple and it is, indeed, more brittle. Definitely does not bend as well. I did not have any trouble gluing it with both Titebond and hide glue.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

About 2-3 years ago, I asked my local lumber yard to get me a price on 350bf of roasted maple for a kitchen. I got a very good quote, but the owner emailed me later that his supplier had stopped selling it because it was too fragile, and prone to shattering. I know not all processes are the same, but there seems to be a lot of cross over in naming the products ie "heat treated, torrefied, baked, roasted" etc.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker