Creosote for guitars?

[charles Tauber]

Originally Posted by agfsteve

you'd think they could come up with a way of doing something to a piece of wood to make it more resistant to humidity.

They can, and have. The problem is that those things don't lend themselves well to keeping woods light and tonally responsive.

[bufflehead]

Originally Posted by charles Tauber

They can, and have. The problem is that those things don't lend themselves well to keeping woods light and tonally responsive.

Agreed. Laminates, for example, resist cracking. But the guitar community turns up its nose at laminates, especially for the soundboard, because they don't produce the subtle tones, not to mention overtones, that we want.

I have an HPL Little Martin that I use for kayak camping. It doesn't care about humidity, and the surface is more scratch-proof than normal pick guards. But the best thing I can say about its tone is that it's pretty good for HPL.

Beautiful tonewoods are necessarily fragile. That's why we put so much effort into their preservation.

[lowrider]

Creosote smells like money to me! As a life long heavy construction carpenter, I worked with a lot of creosote treaded lumber in the old days

Did anyone know that you get really sun-tan working with creosote lumber? One time, one of the guys working for me, who was half Puerto Rican and half Black, but very light skinned, came home from work and his wife said ''What happened, you went to work white and you came home black!''

[frankmcr]

Originally Posted by agfsteve

You can get wooden patio furniture that is treated to handle wild humidity swings, so why can't they do the same for wooden guitars?

Obviously guitars are much more delicate than patio furniture, but for guitars they'd only need to make them able to handle, say, 20% - 70% humidity, which is probably much more stable than what patio furniture has to endure.

Go for it.

[mawmow]

To my knowledge, Creosote does not only cover the wood, it penetrates
through fibers to protect not only from humidity but also from any living
organism that could invade and damage the wood.

I once got a used guitar smelling incense for months,
the odor increasing while I was playing.
I would not want to experiment creosote.

[bsman]

Mr. Creosote approves this thread.

RIP Terry Jones.

[DesertTwang]

To me, creosote is the most beautiful smell I have ever experienced. It's so alluring, in fact, that it played a significant role in me leaving my native Germany behind and moving to Arizona. That smell embodies everything o love about the Southwest.

That said, I think we're talking about different kinds of creosote. I'm referring to the Creosote bush, Larrea tridentata, which grows abundantly in the lower Sonoran Desert. If you've ever experienced the mysterious, fragrant smell of the desert after a summer rainstorm, that's Creosote.