Some very good friends of mine have been getting excellent results in their instrument builds using some variation of the torrefaction process whereby they basically cook the wood for specific times and temperatures.
In the wood products and flooring industries, this is pretty common and makes for very hard and durable floors. In the instrument world, I've seen an huge variety in the spectrum- from barely cooked light colored woods to pretty much crumbling burn toast on the inside and out that I would never consider using. I've also seen some very nice applications to moderate hard woods as ebony substitutes.
There is a ton of information and snakeoil floating around the world wide waste of time, so as is often the case, I've been running my own tests here at Condino World Headquarters.
Back when I lived in the high desert, I'd store all of my woods out in the barn rafters that got around 175 degrees in the summer. Pitch would leak out of them like stalagtites....and there was a noticeable difference in the woods after a few years.
A good friend of mine has a dedicated giant oven in the wood shop, sitting right next to the bandsaw. It has dedicated lines of nitrogen gas plumbed into it. Another friend has a giant industrial process. I've been searching for a big chemistry lab autoclave type setup. On the telecaster forum, I saw a lot of decent results with very low tech applications. Like always, I made several dozen test runs. In the end, this version worked quite well:
NOTE: All of this is meant to be a review of my experience, not an invitation to burn your house down!
-Step #1 - the most important part of the process!!!!! Pick a weekend when Mrs. C is out of town!
- pre heat the house oven to 170 degrees F.
- wrap all of the wood in several layers of aluminum foil to remove the oxygen (combustion!). True, it is not perfect, but this eliminates most of it. You may get a slight toasting on the outside, but like at breakfast time, it scrapes right off.
-insert wrapped wood into oven leaving plenty of room for air to circulate.
-turn over temp up to 375 degrees F and let cook for 2 1/2 hours. Turn oven down to 160 degrees F for one hour and then let everything cool completely.
VERY IMPORTANT: Cook a dinner of fish or spicy Indian food or something to cover up the funny smells in the house before Mrs C. returns! Actually, the smell was quite pleasant...like making cookies or the smell inside of a maple syrup cook house back when I was a kid in the Adirondacks.
This resulted in a modest sort of thermally curing, but no carmelized colors like true torrifaction.
Next day: repeat process.
The second cooking resulted in pretty even carmelizing through the entire spruce boards; much less with the maple boards. Wedges were cured out slightly more; solid 1" boards were much lighter. Note one of the boards.
Secured in my ancient old Emmert pattenrmaker's vise:
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