Torrefied Maple - OB Shafts
- Thread starter JusticeNJ
- Start date
Prather
Is Prather supplying the Kellwood to most of the cue makers and they are then finishing to order?
Is Prather supplying the Kellwood to most of the cue makers and they are then finishing to order?
Keilwood { toriffied } shaft blanks
IF have canadian hard rock keilwood shaft blanks for sale in the .......Machinery and Supplies forum........ the best, many repeat buyers , and excellent feedback. For those who dont care for carbon fibre, but want something more than regular maple, this wood makes great playing shafts . The ones I have made hit very solid , and feel great , no ping or any funny noises ........good solid crisp hit . I love mine and will never go back to regular maple .
IF have canadian hard rock keilwood shaft blanks for sale in the .......Machinery and Supplies forum........ the best, many repeat buyers , and excellent feedback. For those who dont care for carbon fibre, but want something more than regular maple, this wood makes great playing shafts . The ones I have made hit very solid , and feel great , no ping or any funny noises ........good solid crisp hit . I love mine and will never go back to regular maple .
Does anyone know if the front end is hollow?
For most torrefied shafts - It’s my understanding that they are not hollow.
For the OB shafts, I’m not sure.
OB says these are lightweight shafts, making them LD. I'm curious on what the average weights are for both the 11.8 and 12.3
A buddy of mine bought a 12.3 radial pin shaft in Vegas & it only weighed 2.8 ounces.
I wasn't even interested in trying the shaft after seeing the scale.
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hollowing
The primary reason for torrefying wood is to make a more compact and consistent fuel. It can even be powdered fine enough to use in gas furnaces of the industrial variety. It is very brittle at that point. I suspect that it is much more brittle than wood a full ounce heavier for the same profile too. Seems to work OK as a solid shaft but hollowing it might be a bridge too far. Can't know until somebody tests and the right ferrule or ferrule replacement might make it workable.
Hu
WowI wasn't expecting it to be that light.
The primary reason for torrefying wood is to make a more compact and consistent fuel. It can even be powdered fine enough to use in gas furnaces of the industrial variety. It is very brittle at that point. I suspect that it is much more brittle than wood a full ounce heavier for the same profile too. Seems to work OK as a solid shaft but hollowing it might be a bridge too far. Can't know until somebody tests and the right ferrule or ferrule replacement might make it workable.
Hu
Some more info about why I'm particularly interested in a torrefied shaft, edited to keep the relevant stuff, from a guitar luthier Q&A:
Q: And that’s due more to how wood changes over time rather than a case of "they don’t make ‘em like they used to?"
A: Correct. Pre-war Martins did not sound the way they do now when they were fresh out of the factory. There are also some acoustic guitars being made today that are of equal or better craftsmanship than some vintage guitars but still can’t get that response.
To understand why, you need to think about what happens to the wood over time.
Freshly cut wood is mostly made of cellulose with lignin, which is a particular type of resin that holds the cellulose together. It has a fairly large content of volatiles - pitches, sugars, oils, and other chemicals that are byproducts of a living tree. It also has considerable water content.
These volatiles initially have a damping effect when a guitar is first made. They prevent the top from vibrating as freely as it could.
Over decades of air-drying, these volatiles will oxidize [combine with oxygen], gas off and mineralize. The slow chemical reaction emits a gas and leaves a mineral residue. The lignin also sets like a glue, holding the cellulose together.
Trees also have vessels within them that bring water from bottom of the trunk up through the tree. These vessels have valves. These also oxidize and mineralize, closing the valves. This changes the cellular structure of the wood from something like a sponge, which is open-cell, to something like styrofoam, which is closed-cell. This eventually makes wood more resistant to temperature and humidity changes.
Three main things happen over time as the volatiles oxidize, the lignin sets and the cells close: 1) Sound velocity is improved because of diminished damping. 2) The wood becomes lighter and vibrates more freely. 3) The wood becomes stiffer.
When wood is fully cured and volatiles are fully oxidized, it becomes a better material for musical instruments.
All these things happen naturally, but it takes decades of exposure to air for wood to fully cure. Humidification slows this down. Torrefaction speeds up that process. It changes the chemical content of the wood to make it resemble what it would be decades from now.
Source: https://reverb.com/news/are-torrefied-tops-the-new-industry-standard-dana-bourgeois-weighs-in
___________________________________________________________________________________________
To add to the above, here's some interesting take on Stradivarius' wood from a NYT article, note the tidbit about moisture content in particular:
The researchers also discovered that one-third of a wood component known as hemicellulose had decomposed in Stradivari and Guarneri’s instruments. Because hemicellulose naturally absorbs a lot of moisture, the effect was that the instruments had about 25 percent less water in them than more recent models.
“This is fundamentally important because the less moisture, the more brilliant the sound,” said Joseph Nagyvary, a luthier and a professor emeritus of biochemistry at Texas A&M University who was not involved in this study.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/science/stradivari-violin-wood.html
Q: And that’s due more to how wood changes over time rather than a case of "they don’t make ‘em like they used to?"
A: Correct. Pre-war Martins did not sound the way they do now when they were fresh out of the factory. There are also some acoustic guitars being made today that are of equal or better craftsmanship than some vintage guitars but still can’t get that response.
To understand why, you need to think about what happens to the wood over time.
Freshly cut wood is mostly made of cellulose with lignin, which is a particular type of resin that holds the cellulose together. It has a fairly large content of volatiles - pitches, sugars, oils, and other chemicals that are byproducts of a living tree. It also has considerable water content.
These volatiles initially have a damping effect when a guitar is first made. They prevent the top from vibrating as freely as it could.
Over decades of air-drying, these volatiles will oxidize [combine with oxygen], gas off and mineralize. The slow chemical reaction emits a gas and leaves a mineral residue. The lignin also sets like a glue, holding the cellulose together.
Trees also have vessels within them that bring water from bottom of the trunk up through the tree. These vessels have valves. These also oxidize and mineralize, closing the valves. This changes the cellular structure of the wood from something like a sponge, which is open-cell, to something like styrofoam, which is closed-cell. This eventually makes wood more resistant to temperature and humidity changes.
Three main things happen over time as the volatiles oxidize, the lignin sets and the cells close: 1) Sound velocity is improved because of diminished damping. 2) The wood becomes lighter and vibrates more freely. 3) The wood becomes stiffer.
When wood is fully cured and volatiles are fully oxidized, it becomes a better material for musical instruments.
All these things happen naturally, but it takes decades of exposure to air for wood to fully cure. Humidification slows this down. Torrefaction speeds up that process. It changes the chemical content of the wood to make it resemble what it would be decades from now.
Source: https://reverb.com/news/are-torrefied-tops-the-new-industry-standard-dana-bourgeois-weighs-in
___________________________________________________________________________________________
To add to the above, here's some interesting take on Stradivarius' wood from a NYT article, note the tidbit about moisture content in particular:
The researchers also discovered that one-third of a wood component known as hemicellulose had decomposed in Stradivari and Guarneri’s instruments. Because hemicellulose naturally absorbs a lot of moisture, the effect was that the instruments had about 25 percent less water in them than more recent models.
“This is fundamentally important because the less moisture, the more brilliant the sound,” said Joseph Nagyvary, a luthier and a professor emeritus of biochemistry at Texas A&M University who was not involved in this study.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/science/stradivari-violin-wood.html
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Here's a counterpoint to the prior post from another luthier:
Vintage wood quality is better and time does things chemically that can't be sped up in an oven.
This is VERY obvious in violins I've built.
The wood cells basically become a fine lattice meshwork that's very porous strong and light.
Baking the wood will pull all the water out...but it destroys the cell walls. The wood is lighter and carmelized but that fine scaffolding structure is destroyed.
There's water inside the wood cells that's trapped. It takes years to get it out without destroying the cell walls. Baking gets it out....but in a brutal manner that kills the Wood's sound properties and strength to weight ratio.
For me, I'm willing to roll the dice for a modest price. Like I said, I'll post an update here when I get my torrefied maple shaft from Richard Hsu in about a month. I'm less interested in the LD properties, and more in the harmonic/feel properties.
Vintage wood quality is better and time does things chemically that can't be sped up in an oven.
This is VERY obvious in violins I've built.
The wood cells basically become a fine lattice meshwork that's very porous strong and light.
Baking the wood will pull all the water out...but it destroys the cell walls. The wood is lighter and carmelized but that fine scaffolding structure is destroyed.
There's water inside the wood cells that's trapped. It takes years to get it out without destroying the cell walls. Baking gets it out....but in a brutal manner that kills the Wood's sound properties and strength to weight ratio.
For me, I'm willing to roll the dice for a modest price. Like I said, I'll post an update here when I get my torrefied maple shaft from Richard Hsu in about a month. I'm less interested in the LD properties, and more in the harmonic/feel properties.
I still wondering if the Prather shop is supplying most of the Keilwood for the cue-maker market.
Not sure. Richard Hsu's website says his shafts are quartersawn; don't see that description on Prather's website, though I don't know if all shafts blanks are rift or quartersawn and Prather's website just assumes that's the case. Perhaps a cuemaker can chime in.
I'm not sure how accessible the torrefying process is to most cuemakers, so I could see it being the case that most of the stock comes from a central place.
shafts are round!
I realize that I may be the only one that has discovered this but cue shafts are round and they come from square stock. Lumber has advantages to being quartersawn. The benefit has to do with how the growth rings are aligned in the board. Knowing how any piece of wood is subject to shrink as it dries is a big deal when we are talking about structural timber that will have loads placed on it in a particular direction for many years to come.
Quartersawn lumber gives greater strength for heavy construction while yielding less board feet per log. We pay a premium for both reasons. Go down to the local big box and look at a stack of two by tens or twelves. A knowing eye quickly sees that all of these boards come from comparatively small trees. These boards have to warp in drying, or build up stresses and strains in the wood as they try too. They call this utility grade or flat sawn wood. To be blunt, it is crap.
A cue shaft is dried, allowed to warp, cut straight, allowed to move, cut, six to twelve times before it becomes a blank ready for final tapering in many shops. Due to the nature of the square and round blanks, there is no such thing as quartersawn or any other designation usually given as designations in timber. When selecting a blank, look at the number of growth rings but more importantly look at how they run off down the length of the blank and how consistent the spacing of the rings side to side is. I would rather have eight growth rings evenly spaced and straight down the shaft than twice that many all bunched up on one side, spread out on the other, and running off going down the length of the shaft.
Going through raw blanks, preferably square, I designated 15-20% as premium shafts, sometimes ten percent or less but talking average blanks here. Maybe the same percentage more that are second grade, quite fine for the average replacement shaft or under five hundred dollar cue. All of my personal playing shafts come from this grade. They ain't as pretty as the best but they cook just fine! The next grade might find a use, the rest is spacers building something around the shop, drift to cut in short pieces to hammer on, and kindling. These also make very fine but expensive survey stakes!
Others mileage may vary but after a shaft blank is turned round I would like to see anyone sort out which wood is quartersawn or cut in any other manner. If I had the whole log to work with I would probably split it like cutting shakes for a roof and then cut to shaft blank dimensions. I would get fewer blanks but better quality blanks. A very careful person could do the same thing sawing down growth rings, can't do it in high production environments.
My final test for a shaft blank to use is the ping test. Regardless of all other considerations, if it ain't got the ping it don't mean a thing!
Carbon fiber will take over just because of much better radial consistency than about 90% of wooden blanks. It ain't pretty and it can't cook but for the first time in over fifty years I am not indexing my shaft on every shot.
Hu's version of the shaft wood mystique.
Hu
I realize that I may be the only one that has discovered this but cue shafts are round and they come from square stock. Lumber has advantages to being quartersawn. The benefit has to do with how the growth rings are aligned in the board. Knowing how any piece of wood is subject to shrink as it dries is a big deal when we are talking about structural timber that will have loads placed on it in a particular direction for many years to come.
Quartersawn lumber gives greater strength for heavy construction while yielding less board feet per log. We pay a premium for both reasons. Go down to the local big box and look at a stack of two by tens or twelves. A knowing eye quickly sees that all of these boards come from comparatively small trees. These boards have to warp in drying, or build up stresses and strains in the wood as they try too. They call this utility grade or flat sawn wood. To be blunt, it is crap.
A cue shaft is dried, allowed to warp, cut straight, allowed to move, cut, six to twelve times before it becomes a blank ready for final tapering in many shops. Due to the nature of the square and round blanks, there is no such thing as quartersawn or any other designation usually given as designations in timber. When selecting a blank, look at the number of growth rings but more importantly look at how they run off down the length of the blank and how consistent the spacing of the rings side to side is. I would rather have eight growth rings evenly spaced and straight down the shaft than twice that many all bunched up on one side, spread out on the other, and running off going down the length of the shaft.
Going through raw blanks, preferably square, I designated 15-20% as premium shafts, sometimes ten percent or less but talking average blanks here. Maybe the same percentage more that are second grade, quite fine for the average replacement shaft or under five hundred dollar cue. All of my personal playing shafts come from this grade. They ain't as pretty as the best but they cook just fine! The next grade might find a use, the rest is spacers building something around the shop, drift to cut in short pieces to hammer on, and kindling. These also make very fine but expensive survey stakes!
Others mileage may vary but after a shaft blank is turned round I would like to see anyone sort out which wood is quartersawn or cut in any other manner. If I had the whole log to work with I would probably split it like cutting shakes for a roof and then cut to shaft blank dimensions. I would get fewer blanks but better quality blanks. A very careful person could do the same thing sawing down growth rings, can't do it in high production environments.
My final test for a shaft blank to use is the ping test. Regardless of all other considerations, if it ain't got the ping it don't mean a thing!
Carbon fiber will take over just because of much better radial consistency than about 90% of wooden blanks. It ain't pretty and it can't cook but for the first time in over fifty years I am not indexing my shaft on every shot.
Hu's version of the shaft wood mystique.
Hu