Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi All, I am fairly new, but looked to see if anyone was posting on specifically using torrified bracing on torrified tops. Any issues with using non-torrified. I assume there would be, but haven't seen any discussions. Thanks all! Happy New Year!!

I have not used torrified materials yet but since no one is responding to your post I thought I would offer what I remember from prior discussions and maybe bump the post. There are discussions here in the archives too. I do have some torrified tops and bracing in stock and in fact I am thinking of trying it out soon. I can't recall a discussion specifically about this either but I cannot imagine why there would be a problem using regular bracing on a torrified top. I do believe I remember some complaints that it doesn't glue up as well as regular wood and that the clamp time should be increased.

Having said that, it seems to me that for what torrified wood is designed to do it would be better to use torrified bracing as well. Simply to have the whole top system in the same boat so to speak.

There definitely shouldn't be a problem using natural spruce braces on a torrified top. No different than using spruce braces on a cedar or redwood top (which is preferable to using cedar or redwood braces, since they have lower strength, and thus creep more over time when subjected to high stress).

Actually, I'd like to know the modulus of rupture for torrified spruce before using it for brace wood. I've never handled any myself, but the way people describe it, it sounds more like redwood than spruce. So I wonder if the strength is unaffected, or more like redwood as well.