Having just finished oiling the fleet of flutes, including a six-key LeHart, I turned to oiling my wooden whistles. Probably because of the fussy attention to detail required to oil a keyed flute properly, I suddenly realised that there was something very basic I didn’t know about oiling whistles.
I checked a few web sites, including Abell, and read back over a number of old threads here, in many of which I was an active participant, but nowhere did I see an answer to this pretty obvious puzzle.
If I remember, rightly, Chris Abell tells us to oil the wooden bits of a whistle, inside and out, but to avoid getting oil on the metal—much the same as a flute. Complying is no problem for the tube, nor for oiling the outside of the head but how do you oil the wooden inside of the head, from end of windway to beginning of tuning slide, without getting oil on the slide? With the flutes I was oiling, this part of the exercise just requires a bit of care, but with whistles, the only modes of access are through the tuning slide or through the window. Either way, you aren’t going to be able to do the job with much precision I fear.
I can tell you what I know from having an all-wood recorder. Don’t get oil close to the window, especially the blade and don’t get oil in the wind way, as oil can make the wood change dimensions and throw things off. With recorders, they have an absorbent wooden fipple they call a block that should not get oiled, otherwise it can stop being hydrophilic enough for the water to spread out and the wind way becomes prone to getting clogged with moisture. I know that you are not supposed to get oil in the finger holes as that can change their size and throw off intonation. You probably figured much of this stuff out from knowing how to oil wooden flutes. I imagine a good recorder web site that includes recorder care would have some sort of information that might be of help.
As far as I’m concerned, you can lightly oil everything except inside the windway. Not too much on the blade. Afterwards, I’d wipe off the tuning slide with a dry cloth.
Lots of people seem to think that they have to oil the heck out of these whistles, but it’s not necessary. The wood can only absorb just so much oil and once it’s in the grain of the wood it doesn’t evaporate. I oil my own whistles fairly frequently in the beginning (weekly?), then less often as I note that they’re not absorbing much oil.
Oil the hj and then simply clean any excess oil off the slide first by wiping with a clean cloth or paper towel, then clean off any remaining oil residue by wiping with denatured alcohol, or acetone, being careful not to get that on the wood. A little bit on a q-tip normally does the trick. Wipe once more with something clean to remove any residue from the solvent.
The reason it’s not recommended to get oil on the tuning slide parts, is that this can cause major sticking problems on whistles with “Dry-Fit” metal tuning slides, like the Abell.
Thanks guys. It turns out that what Paul and Loren are recommending is pretty much what I had been doing. Mucking about with keyed flutes can make you pretty fussy, I guess.
Hmm, well different recorder makers may suggest different care, depending on the maker’s preferences and what the recorder is made from (all wood with a natural finish, all wood with a lacquer finish, wax impregnated wood, natural block, treated wooden block, block with insert material, etc., etc…)
For the wooden recorders made where I worked, oiling every part of the instrument except the block and windway was recommeded - ramp, labium, inside of tone holes, and all. This is fairly typical of the really well made recorders - a bit of oiling shouldn’t cause any problems sort of getting it in the windway and on the block. Of course, always consult the person who made your instrument, because recorder people are freaky
After oiling about a dozen instruments today I was on automatic, and I had to stop myself as I reached for my Boehm flute. (Now, if that were wood, that would be fun to oil.)
On the subject of what to oil and what not to oil, if you follow Michael Grinter’s full-immersion, baptismal. approach to oiling, and I do for his whistles, you can’t help oiling the windway. I just assume that the makers know what they are doing. Or, if they don’t know what they are doing, they are more likely to repair if you followed their instructions. Makes sense, I think.
Ya, Grinter is unusual in the R#c@rder and whistle world in that he apparently fits oil soaked/impregnated blocks of some sort in his instruments. It’s not the norm in the Recorder world - most makers favor natural Cedar (Juniper) blocks, left untreated, so they absorb moisture as you play, rather than repel it, as Grinter’s blocks do. Two different philosophies, but I won’t ramble on at length about them in detail and bore everyone to tears.
Like you say, the maker knows best about his/her instruments, so always ask and follow their directions. As you say Wombat, if you have problems down the road a maker is much more likely to help you out if you’ve followed their care directions.
Offhand, I think the Grinters are the only wooden whistles I have with wooden blocks. Funny thing, with all the others, I love the way they sound straight after oiling. The sound of the Grinter after you have wiped off the excess oil is incredibly unfocussed. But, a day or two later and it just sings.
I get the same thing from wooden flutes when I oil them, usually. I don’t don’t do the full submersion treatment with my Grinter F, I’m too lazy, but even so, like with most other wooden instruments, I do find a slight dulling of the sound immediately after oiling. I believe this to be because the oil left in pores of the bore, acts somewhat like acoustic tile in a music room - absorbing a bit of the acoustical energy you’re putting into the instrument, and taking out a measure of the natural reflectivity the interior instrument walls normally provide. You know, a bit like taking the rug off your floor in the living room, or removing all the furniture.
I’ve oiled my Abell several times by dipping the entire thing in almond oil and leaving it overnight, then wipe down in the AM, inside and out. The whole thing, metal, labium, windway…everything got oil. Never had a problem and didn’t realize there was a possibility of one, though I did see (I think on the Abell web site) that the labium blade should not be oiled. Didn’t hurt, though.
On the other hand, I have a set of Abell whistles (D headjoint with bodies for D, C, and Eb) that I’ve owned since the 1980s, and a Bb Abell that I got in the early 1990s, and I haven’t put a drop of oil in any of them in at least 10 years. They’re in fine shape and play as well as they did when they were new. I don’t oil my wooden flutes either. I am careful to swab out the whistles (and flutes) when I’m done playing, and protect the flutes (but not the whistles) against dry heat in winter, and have never had any problems.
