Baking Tops

[Terence Kennedy]

Greetings Frank et.al.
Most of the tops I build with are old spruce and have been stable but some of the newer cut Lutz I've used is not. There have been some issues.
I think I need to get into baking these babies. Frank, Addam Stark suggested I contact you about your feelings on this. Any guidelines as to how long, temps, etc. etc.?
Thanks a Million
Terry Kennedy
www.kennedyguitars.com

[Steve Frost]

Terry- my best recollection from discussions elsewhere is a recommendation of 200 degrees F for an hour. A search of UMGF ,OLF and MIMF will doubtless give you more info than you need. I assume these are guitar tops?

[FRANK]

i have gone all day at 150 turned out just fine

[Terence Kennedy]

Thanks guys,
+/- 1 hour at 200 was what I was finding as I looked around as well. The 150 all day is interesting. Almost like a drying box with a light bulb in it. Biggest hurdle may be talking my wife into letting me use her oven.
Terry

[Bob Webster]

So, the $64 question is, how long do you let it sit around at ambient temp and humidity before it's suitable for use?

By the way, Terry, I really enjoyed my visit to your site today. How do you think the Lutz spruce compares with the run-of-the-mill European, Italian, and Engelmann spruce in classical guitars? So much is made by some about the low damping of the Lutz. Does that really get translated into better tonality?

Thanks,
Bob

[Terence Kennedy]

Thanks Bob,
I've only built with old Sitka (cut in the 70's and 80's) and the relatively newer cut Lutz. (plus one Italian) The Lutz guitars have sounded great and I think it's a fine tonewood. Pretty hard to go wrong trying it. It's loud and seems to give good tonal separation to my ear. Lutz is the reason I want to start baking. The stuff I have gotten was only cut within the last few years and seems more unstable to temp and humidity than the older cut woods even though the moisture content checks out at less then 6%. I am hoping baking will help that. I'm all ears if anyone has more information. This is a new area for me.
Terry

[Ned Knepp]

Terry,
Your site is really nice, very well done. I listened to the sound bites you have up. Your guitars sound great. The Rosewood/spruce, in particular, stunned me with it's clarity across the board. The size 2 parlor is something I keep thinking I would like to try building someday. After listening to yours, I feel like the bar for sound quality is pretty high. It's very sweet. Of course I don't know how what mic setup you used to record it but it's much louder than I would have expected from that size box. Good stuff.

Ned

[Terence Kennedy]

Thanks Ned,
The size 2's are my favorites. The recording was done by The Podium, the store that sells my stuff. I don't know the mic setup.
Terry

[Ned Knepp]

Your parlor is sweet but I don't think I could talk my wife into another guitar. She seems to think that things like food and college tuition are important.

Perhaps, someday, I'll try my hand at building my own style 2 but I certainly don't hold any illusions that a first try would sound like that. It's really sweet.

Ned