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Not necks...but body and headstock facings.

It's helpful to sandwich the pieces between two thick (I used 1" milled plate) pieces of aluminum because 1. I had lots of it on hand. 2. It transfers (and therefore homogenizes) the heat well. ....and 3. It acts as a caul to help the wood maintain its flatness. I recommend doing this. The wood would be sandwiched parallel to the growth rings for a neck blank.

I've done a lot more Myrtle because I found it gave me a lot more latitude deciding how dark to go. The Maple less so.

One other point. The Maple used was soft and quite figured. Each piece is going to require a different schedule so it a given that you'll need to experiment with sections.

The first defining effects occurred using 350 F. for two hours....and ended up at 450 F. for four hours on some pieces. The faster and shorter schedule produced a nice result that was a grayish, antique look. It appeared aged. The longer schedule produced more of the same...only it tanned up more.

Nothing I baked looks like the picture though. I've purchased "toasted" Maple from a local supplier that does look like the picture. I haven't experimented with hard rock Maple and look forward to any comments that address it specifically. Eventually I'll develop the process more. I much prefer the look of baked or toasted woods much better than stains, dies, or tints.

Pretty sure the only species I've used so far is big leaf Maple...which grows everywhere out here. I have GOBS of nicely figured stuff but it's all softer than you'd want to use for neck wood. There is also roughly 30 hard rock Maple neck blanks from some 10/4 lumber I sawed up a year ago. Nice...straight and stable. I'll certainly be toasting some of them.

Reading on the subject there's a theory that baking stabilizes wood. I'm not convinced of this through what I've read (hoping for a more "scientific" explanation than I've been able to find) but logically, I don't think it can hurt anything...could be wrong.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

No experience here Filippo but that sure is some beautiful wood.

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Thank You and Best To All

i once roasted a laminated headstock for a singed effect, and the glue joints started to separate....i'm guessing most people here would have foreseen something like that though. i didn't know any better at the time

Don't use a microwave....

Yes...that's the consensus. I suppose if any wood in known for its sugar content it would be eastern Maple...so that makes it a good candidate for a toastable wood that offer some latitude for processing.

I find this one of the more interesting things....baking for color. With some Myrtle it turned a mushy khaki, but otherwise beautifully figured piece of wood, into a spectacular golden brown... http://s1299.photobucket.com/user/Stuar ... t=3&page=1

It's one of those things that if one gets a REAL handle on...it could provide a way to stick out from the crowd. It's worth experimenting with other light colored species to have more of a palette to work with.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Hans Brede, of Tempered Tonewoods, is on the road at the moment; he can be reached at Hans@temperedtonewoods.com (site is being revamped, back up soon), or 707 322 3633. We've been building basses with both bodies and necks out of cooked wood here in the SF bay area, and George Langston, www.facebook.com/LangstonGuitarAndAmpWorks, is building Teles in Albuquerque.

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https://soundcloud.com/jeffreylsuits/he ... -runnin-13

Check out this thread on the Ukulele Underground.... http://forum.ukuleleunderground.com/sho ... aked+maple

So I just baked some birch and apple. Yes, apple. For kicks I am starting to build a guitar from only wood found on the family farm, just north of Calgary. It's cheap, in fact it's free and I'm looking for more practice. We really don't have a lot of exotic nor colourful wood in this region so I was intrigued by the idea in this thread of bringing some colour contrast into the design. See the result of the test below with the source wood on the right and the cooked on the left (just in case anyone from the slow group couldn't figure that out). I placed them into an oven at 400F for an hour and...voila! The house smells great. I can hardly wait for my wife to come home to the aroma I have introduced.

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Doug

Don't let fear or common sense stop you from trying to build something

Fortunately for me, I'm building the guitar for my wife's sister so really I'm building it for my wife so really she should be thanking me for using her oven. Feel free to check back with me later to see how that spin went.

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Doug

Don't let fear or common sense stop you from trying to build something

I have a roasted maple mirror frame that I made years ago when we bought a ton of the stuff and due to some structural issues, had to abandon using a bunch of this stuff. We were doing some millwork for an upscale furniture company and used some very dark roasted maple, dark like Peruvian walnut. At first we just loved the stuff, the color, the smell and how different it was. When we went to install it though the stuff just started falling apart. It just would not hold nails for anything so we had to re-run a ton of millwork out of stained walnut. When I assembled my frame I used biscuits and glue so I haven't had any problems with it. I would say do not try and go too dark, the wood we had almost shredded.

regarding "stability": as a kid back in the day my gramps used to take us up to the high country far above kootenay lake, just across from where Hippy-Come-Lately Alex stays, in Nelson, to pan gold and shoot pistols and pick huckleberries and spot black bears and such...and up there among the devil's club stood the burned out, charred stumps of original (old)growth cedars and i guess doug firs, cut up high at the alpine snow line and subsequently burned over, back in the 1800s...big monsters...but they seemed immune from mosses and shelf fungi and such. they are still there i am sure. maybe the baking process alters or drives off nutrients(sugars/H2O?) that bacteria, worms and fungi would otherwise seek, or introduces inhibiting noxious compounds: sounds like a good idea for outdoor shakes and decking and posts, but for an indoor, climate-controlled beast like a guitar, that is not going to be planted in soil, i would guess that that sort of stability is a moot point. baking is for color and character. on the down side, i'm guessing that it also reduces the density of the wood substantially, beyond temporary water loss
...just some more of that characteristic nyazzip conjecture

"I got a lecture for about a year about how that was HER oven ... argh."
For the past few days I've been filling the oven, top to bottom, with guitar tops. My wife commented on the unique smell, but surprisingly, didn't complain. Keeping birds, she is very critical of odors and cooking utensils (teflon ).

I did some research on the subject a while back and came across a few good points:

-While stiffness (MOE) and most strength properties were not affected by heat treatment, shear strength was lowered, sometimes drastically depending on how high the temp. I want to say tensile strength perpendicular to the grain was lowered as well, meaning heat treated wood is more likely to split when dinged.
-This is probably not a big deal for most applications, but I can see a Gibson-style electric headstock being more prone to crack where they usually do.
-I also remember seeing a guitar on this forum where the bridge popped off unexpectedly and had a quite uniform very thin layer of spruce still attached. I wonder if that top was baked and if a loss of shear strength might have contributed to the failure?
-I can also see where acoustics with baked tops would be more prone to failure parallel to the fretboard extension like the splitting failures that show up on a lot of old Martins.

-Regarding stability, the literature does support a decrease in wood movement with changes in humidity after baking/heat treatment due to at least two factors:
1. Hygroscopicity is decreased, meaning the wood takes in less water. Since it takes in less water, it expands less than normal wood. IIRC what happens is that the heat degrades hemicellulose which makes up the cell walls which determine free moisture content. That might also be the cause of the loss of shear/tensile strength but that's purely conjecture on my part.
2. Hysteresis: this is a phenomenon where equilibrium moisture content (EMC) is determined not just from the current conditions, but past conditions too. A piece of wood that is coming from a completely dry condition will have lower EMC than one coming from a saturated condition. Again, less water = less expansion. This is a temporary condition that would be reversed if the wood was brought back up to the saturation point.

This is mostly from memory, so take with a grain of salt... I encourage folks considering putting their wood under extreme conditions to read up some of the known research to get a feel for what might be some unintended consequences.

Taking things a bit further there is a Japanese technique called Shou Sugi Ban which is used for exterior siding and fencing and involves charring cedar planks, brushing back the char and then sealing in oil. It doesn't look like both sides of the planks are charred which I'd guess leaves more structural integrity. I just saw a Strat on a facebook group that was finished using this technique and it is stunning.

http://shousugiban.com/

Don't know if I can post it here, feel free to remove it if it breaks the rules:

I baked a piece of birdseye brown maple and a piece of cherry this evening, at 400F for an hour, with mixed results. Maple was light brown, cherry was very brown, wife and daughter, really browned off! I was in the shop while it was baking, and it smelled like burnt maple syrup, and much stronger upstairs. At least my wife said that the oven was more mine than hers.
I think I'll just buy mine from Exotic Woods.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

The actual process I am aware of as used by manufacturers such as Gibson, Bourgeois and others is a bit more than just baking the wood. It is done in a specialized kiln at low temps with virtually no oxygen present. This process not only imparts color to the wood but also increases stability and hardness.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Topic has been studied thoroughly here in Finland some 20 years ago,
and heat treatment is available and widely used for among others by luthiers here.
It takes a special kiln and certain settings of which I have no better info.
In short, best option for instrument wood is quite "soft" treatment, when there is only
little color chance. When you get roasting effect with the big color chance, you are already losing
the wanted properties of wood.

For further info, check this out:

http://www.ruokangas.com/?p=1871

I know a company in the area that was setting up a kiln for this. They gave some samples last year of some domestic woods. I will reach out to them as I may try to get some tops done. I'll let you know what I find out but from what they told me the process would be hard to replicate in the home shop. The low oxygen has something to do with how the wood fibers change. A reaction similar to, but reverse of using steam to plasticize wood.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

what about putting it in some kind of fireproof pan and filling it with some inert gas?

Ok so my last roasting attempt didn't go so well as I stunk up the house. Needless to say, my wife is enjoying a new iPad Air this Valentine's Day.

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Doug

Don't let fear or common sense stop you from trying to build something

Yup, three days my house stunk, and when we put the lasagna in the oven yesterday, it stunk again. At $6/bf, I'll be buying my roasted maple.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker