Baked maple fret boards?

Here's a photo of a guy's LP jr.

HPIM0918.jpg


HPIM0900.jpg
 
the first manufacturers i saw using roasted/vulcanized/torrefied maple were Suhr and Sadowsky. then Anderson and Music Man got in on it. now Gibson is using it, but only for fretboards. i dig the look, and Mr. Suhr has talked at great lengths about the added stability the process brings.

as for Gibson using it for fretboards, the only problem is that the tags on the guitars on music store walls don't say that the fretboards are torrefied maple (mostly because they don't say anything about what the instrument is made from at all). so unless somebody points it out, most people will think it's rosewood. easily rectified by a "hi! i'm torrefied maple!" tag.

i'm sure the TGPers problem revolves somewhere between "not authentic" and "gubment meddling in business affairs". i just don't care to have the same argument over there too.
 
Whats the point of baking them? Is it just a cosmetic thing? I'd rather see a regular maple board. They're pretty......:love:
 
reverend1 said:
Whats the point of baking them? Is it just a cosmetic thing? I'd rather see a regular maple board. They're pretty......:love:
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removing all the moisture from the wood and then adding back a measured amount brings stability. there's a brittleness factor, so you have to watch the levels, but that's the theory behind it.
 
Help!I'maRock! said:
removing all the moisture from the wood and then adding back a measured amount brings stability. there's a brittleness factor, so you have to watch the levels, but that's the theory behind it.
Click to expand...

I wasn't aware there was a stability issue with maple. Or is this being done to use pieces of maple previously deemed unfit for musical instruments?
 
Tralfaz said:
I wasn't aware there was a stability issue with maple. Or is this being done to use pieces of maple previously deemed unfit for musical instruments?
Click to expand...

you'd have to ask Mr. Suhr. i don't have the technical expertise to talk intelligently about it past what i've posted already. i can tell you my impression, but that may not be the entire story.
 
I might be a guy. Or I might be a guy pretending to be a girl who's pretending to be a guy. :grin:

Yep, that's mine.
HPIM0919.jpg


Here's what I learned about torrefied maple:

During WWII, the US navy was looking for a substitute for teak to use on ship decks and they came up with a process called torrefaction.
Wood is place in a low pressure, low temp oven (like 200 degrees or so) and baked until the moisture content is zero. Then, they inject steam back into under high pressure until the moisture is back to 6%.
The result is a wood that is much harder than the original, 30% lighter, dimensionally stable, warp resistant, bug resistant and waterproof. The process also darkens the wood.
The downside is some brittleness.
Then, of course, the navy started using steel, so everyone forgot about torrefaction until the recent ban on pressure treated lumber due to arsenic in the process. Torrefaction was revived as a sub for pressure treated lumber. Once people started making it, others realized that it would be useful in other places...like guitars.

Anyway, the one on mine is smooth as glass and damn hard. You can try all you want to push a fingernail into it, but you can't make a mark. I've tried. Hell, even trying to radius the edge of the fretboard a bit was a real chore. It's hard.
From 5 feet away, you can't tell it isn't rosewood. Playing it, you'd swear it was ebony.

I'm a fan.

EG
 
When these first hit the market on Suhr, musicman, and such, I looked up some scientific papers on the process to see what was up with the claims. Based on peer reviewed literature, it seems the process induces considerable cross-linking of lignins and such in the wood...meaning it changes the chemical structure of the wood, leading to a much more rigid product. The cross-linking in the wood makes it much less susceptible to moisture infiltration and warping, but does so at a cost, namely reduced structural rigidity and increased brittleness. The numbers representing these differences are probably only important for structural use of wood in beams and stuff, and not so important in guitar necks. I think it is a good way to add some stability to maple, especially figured wood, which can be a little funny. It also probably speeds up manufacturing, as the process is fairly fast compared to old fashioned kiln drying.
 
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