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Here is the latest Luthier Tips du Jour video - In this video I speak with mandolin builder, Geoff Burghardt of iii mandolins, about torrefied wood. This video as well as all my other videos are available via my website, http://www.obrienguitars.com/videos , LMI's website or on youtube.

FWIW, I've built ~20 guitars or more with torrefied tops. I think the tonal impact of a torrefied back on a mando would be pretty insignificant compared to if he had used torrefied top wood. Atorrefied top on a guitar sure makes a difference.

I've had no glueing issues or finishing issues.. The wood is indeed brittle and fragile feeling. I stopped using torrefied bracing for this reason.

As for the sides, yeah good luck bending. The only way I could see that happening is to bend the sides and then have them torrefied.

From my point of view, something is going on that is not even being considered. He's using quilted maple which is undoubtedly Big Leaf maple, a rather soft and dark sounding maple. Other soft maples are Euro and Silver maples. Both are a little brighter than Big Leaf. Red maple was the maple called out for Loars, and then there is sugar maple, very hard, used by a few. I always thought that a sugar maple/red spruce mandolin sounded like a drawer of silverware tossed down a flight of stairs. It was so irritating to me that once I walked out of a Mike Compton concert. Was way too shrill.
Now, the only reason I can think that someone would torridify Big Leaf is to end up with sort of a sugar maple with quilted grain. Mandolins do not need to be shrill...and that is exactly why Charlie Derrington told Big Joe Vest to "Get that sugar maple back out of the Gibson Master Model shop", when Joe asked to have a MM built with sugar maple.
From 25 years experience with building mandolins, I can see no good use for torridifying tops or backs. The immediate goal of building a good sounding mandolin is making it rich and full sounding with good note separation and lots of headroom. There is no room for shrill on an instrument that small...
As an experiment, fine, and good luck.

It's good to hear some significant real world positive experience with torrefied tops. It gives me some interest in actually trying it out. A concern I have left though is does torrefied = torrefied = torrefied from different sources? From what I've read, there are multiple methods being used to produce "torrefied" wood. For the guitar wood world, I can't tell how many original sources there are, how many different methods are being used, which methods go with which sources, or even if any of that really makes a difference.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

If you're uncomfortable, get it from a reliable guitar wood source like allied stew mac etc...just as examples. There are different methods for sure, time and temp make a difference.

I like it for what it does. But it's just another tool in the box...