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I was at a friend's shop yesterday. I saw what I thought was some cedar, but it was torrefied lutz. So I snagged enough to do one guitar. It has a very very different feel and tap tone from regular lutz, and the kicker is that it reeks like brown sugar...

You can see how much darker it is than normal lutz.

Unable to capture any relevant before/after torrefaction data, but still, quite curious to make something from it!

Keep us posted , interesting have never heard of it .

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Lots of chatter on torrefaction. Basically, the wood is cooked at high heat in slow oxygen environment to do...stuff...to it.

I love the Maple I've seen that has been torrified.
Wish I had a way to do it.

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Ed,
I have one I'm working on too, an OM, I thought it smells like mdf. It is very resonant and stiff. Can't wait to hear it. Here's a pic.

Chuck

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Is that lutz or adi?

Is there a supplier offering offering torrified tops as a standard item?

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I get the high heat but how do you slow the oxygen down? (sorry, I couldn't help myself:))

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You talk soothingly to it.

I meant low oxygen...

I'm terrified of torrefied.

Steve

And so you should be!

Stand back and witness in awe as we professionals (cough cough) get to work! At some point. Sometime. On something. Or something...

Wow that really did darken it. Can you explain the process? I thought it was just putting the tops in a regular old oven, how do you reduce the O2? And why do you reduce O2? What is the science behind this? Too many questions?

Wouldn't it be easier to simply build the guitar out of normally priced materials and then throw it on the Weber?

Thinking about the currently running bone thread and wondering if subjecting materials or a completed instrument to French Bulldog farts might be the long lost secret to the iconic sounding instruments of the past.....

Seriously Ed would you be interested in sending us a very small sample of the torrified Lutz for investigation? We would only need a piece an inch or so to put in Dave's microscope (we would be happy to publish the resulting pics that we would take) and I have non-torrified Lutz here to compare it too. It would be interesting to see what the process does at the cellular level.

Also I would be interested in defelection testing the same piece of spruce prior to and after torrification - might be interesting to see what happens to the stiffness in a quantifiable and verifiable manner.

Don't assume I'm a naysayer I'm not just very interested in determining with some science what is happening.

I've cooked Oak in a domestic oven (wrapped in foil) largely to darken it and as an alternative to Ebony. I managed to get it to a shade similar to a dark A.B. Walnut. Not a bad result at all.
This site gives some of the so called benefits and disadvantages:

http://www.torrefactionplus.ca/torrefie ... hp#qualite

Jfmckenna,

I did nothing at all but walk by a buddy's workbench and empty my pockets again.

Hesh, sure you can have the offcuts if you're willing to spring for the post.

I'm not 100% convinced that it's lutz, frankly. The densest lutz I've had has been .38, this top is .45. It's tap tone fwiw, is much more like Sitka. Highs, lows, but no mids. Normally, color would be a tell, but that's obviously out the window here. The best I can say is certainly different. Sorta somehow.

I roasted some maple and cherry samples in the oven. The cherry was dark all the way through, maple part way. Wife was 100% p!ssed off with the burnt maple syrup smell throughout the house. Next time, I'll use the bbq, and put a piece of salmon on a cedar plank.

Alex

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Don't waste good tops with salmon...

Last time that I checked out the cedar planks at Costco, they weren't quarter sawn OR book matched. Rather disappointing that my Executive membership can't get me any decent tonewood.

Alex

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Savages.

I´ve baked a piece of maple at home just out of curiosity, not to claim it has anything to do with torrefication.
It was about 10% lighter and quite a lot darker.



The tele neck is from the same piece of wood as the roasted one.


Is torrefication the same as thermotreatment?
Thermotreatment is a(the same?) method developed in Finland.
Some info here http://www.ruokangas.com/?p=1859
As i understand it, normal thermotreatment is done to construction timber, outdoo-use panels and so on.
But had some negative effects for luthiers.
A university in finland did reserach togheter with some finnish luthiers and came up with a new method just for luthiers,
and my question is if this is the same as torrified wood?

Quote from http://ajl-guitars.com/ajlguitars/index ... IIOkId5Glg
"Thermotimber" is a heat treatment procedure for wood, usually used for construction and carpentry woods. Tampere University of Technology, Luthiery department of Ikaalinen School of Arts and Crafts and a company named "Suomen Ekopuu" has developed a special heat treatment procedure which is suitable for tonewoods. The normal "Thermotimber" procedure has some unwanted side effects for tonewood (decreasing elasticity, decreasing bending strength and colour changes). Certain special modifications to the procedure give many great advantages including increasing the speed of sound and resulting in a lighter weight, These can be reached without any unwanted effects mentiioned above."

The September issue of Acoustic Guitar has an article on this subject. According to the article, "In Finland, torrefaction is known as thermotreatment..". The article also refers to the collaboration between the Tampere University of Technology and some luthiers leading to a research paper published in 2002. I searched for that paper a few months ago but came up empty on a version translated from Finnish so I couldn't read it.

The article also pointed out that:

- the torrified wood can be more brittle and challenging to work with.
- the altered structure of the wood means that dents can't be steamed out.

"Torrefaction can't make a bad piece of wood sound good."

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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

Bad and good being so subjective. I've never once rejected a piece of wood because I thought it sounded bad. If anyone wants to send me a piece of bad wood, I'd appreciate it to know what to look for.

I jumped off the torrefied bandwagon recently because I actually noticed those exact same things myself.

Figured wood, forget it. The birdseyes become loose and can be easily removed by shaping, or they just fall out.

Curly maple is even harder to plane and shape without pulling out the little curls.

Bolt necks don't hold the screws or even brass inserts as well.

I haven't had any frets come up or out yet, but now I wonder.

I can only think that a torrefied spruce top would become extremely brittle crack much easier.

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