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What's your recommendation...Use Torrefied Spruce Bracing for a Torrefied top 000 guitar, or standard brace stock?
I read somewhere that the baking process weakened the brace stock, so hope that anyone who has tried it could share your thoughts.

I don't see any reason to use torrefied wood for bracing. Humidity expansion doesn't matter, any mass savings would be minuscule compared to what you can do with other tricks, and the differences in tone from different soundboard wood species are subtle enough that I'd be very surprised if you could hear any difference from altering the bracewood's damping properties.

I have used this a few times. It does take more clamp time that raw wood. I used hide glue and fish glue with good results. The one thing is that the wood does seem to be more stable than the fresher wood.

_________________
John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

I use torrefied adi when I build with torrefied tops. As to what tonal benefits there might be, would be a different conversation. If you've ever handled torrefied wood, the difference is striking, not subtle.

Both the torrefaction and the thermal modification processes reduce the weight of the brace stock by 10% (the top has also lost 10%). And, since the brace wood is stiffer, you can reduce the width of the braces, further decreasing the overall mass of the braced top. If you use your normal brace width, you will over-brace. Do not reduce the height of the braces.

The slight reduction in strength is not really an issue.

Grant

If it were me, I'd use the torrefied bracing.

I recently retopped a guitar using torrefied Sitka spruce from Stewmac and used their torrefied brace stock.

I glued the bracing to the top using Old Brown Glue and left it in the go bar deck for 24 hours. So far, so good.

I'm retopping another guitar with torrefied Sitka spruce and I'm using torrefied braces on this one, too.

So it's all done with strings on and no problems? That's a relief to know. I've been using OBG just for closing the box, but a bit skeptical of its strength due to the way the squeeze-out forms a waterproof film on its surface and never dries. But the web site says that the wood should suck the moisture out of the actual glue line, so it should dry about the same as regular hide glue. I would have thought OBG would be totally useless for torrefied wood, since it doesn't absorb water the way regular wood does.

Totally done with strings on and no problems. It sounds really good. (See below)

OBG seems to work just fine. When I joined the top on the guitar below I actually forgot to heat the OBG. Again, seemed to work just fine. I did heat it up for the braces, however.

I should add that I shipped the guitar back to its owner last November. He's been playing it every day and loving it.