Roasted maple

Mike81

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Anyone have any experience using this for cue butts ? Pros and cons? Is it strong, weak or the same. Just curious. I see it’s popular for guitar makers and looks very nice. Isnt it the same process that produces kielwood..?
 
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thoffen

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I seem to recall Eric having done a cue or two with some toasted maple involved. I don't have any actual experience, just read up on it a bit, so take this FWIW. Some people have cooked some wood in their ovens, which apparently is not so hard to do, and you can definitely change the color of a piece and also the moisture content doing that. This is different than a torrefaction process which basically dehydrates the wood first under a vacuum then brings it up to a critical temperature which starts breaking down the cellular structure and then adds moisture back to the process to get the MC back up so it's not too brittle to work with.

I don't know if it's any better. According to the instrument guys, it changes the tone which has a lot of positive potential. And it is more dimensionally stable. But also more brittle, so not good for threading, and you wouldn't be able to steam out any dings.

The look can be striking if used in the right way, but that might not be a good thing for pioneers in the cue making world. Sometimes different is better but is too different to succeed.
 
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