Hello fellow whistlers,
I am curious to find out just what are the pros and cons (if any) of anodised (low in particular) whistles. Are they an improvement over unanodised aluminum and are they more scratch/ding resistant? How do they hold up over time? Is this the type of instrument I can expect to last a lifetime given proper care (while still looking good)? Any experiences or lore would be most welcome. Also thought it might make an interesting thread.
Thank you all very much.
Deasan
Anodized whistles ARE aluminum-- anodizing is a surface treatment.
I have only one, a blue anodized A Overton by Colin Goldie. Colin made it blue to match my electric blue PT Cruiser and it really looks terrific (plays great too). I can’t say much about it being more durable, because I’m really careful with my whistles and keep this one in it’s case whenever I’m not playing it. No scratches so far though, in the 3-4 years I’ve owned it.
Unless you drive a large heavy car over it, pretty much any aluminum whistle, anodized or not, would be very durable .
As Paul says, it’s a surface treatment.
An interesting, if unrelated, bit of trivia comes from an experience I had with the Xerox Corporation several years ago. The company I worked for at the time supplied the fuser rollers for the Xerox photocopiers. These rollers used an aluminum ‘core’ body covered with polymer. The roller had a very powerfull quartz lamp that ran through its center to supply the heat needed to fuse the toner to the paper. We attempted to use a black anodize on the inside of the aluminum core to improve the transfer of heat through the roller. The intense light (surprisingly, not the intense heat) of the lamp caused the anodize to become clear in a short time. Not that this would happen with a whistle of course, but it was a curious thing that none of the chemists or engineers anticipated. I’ve always thought it might be just possible that an anodized whistle might lose its color if left for a very long time in intense, direct sunlight. It’s never been proven to my knowledge, but it would be interesting.
That makes sense since that fact that the process of Anodizing creates many tiny pores in the surface, a dye goes into the hole to give the color and then a sealing material closes the pore. If the pore material melts, the dye will leach out. Some use polymers and other use materials like teflon.
The material surround the pores becomes a variety aluminum oxide which is strong than regular aluminum. (Sand paper is made from aluminum oxide - strong stuff).
I remember that Serpent Whistles Bill Whedon used to do his own anodizing in the his garage.
very interesting - thank you all thus far
Not to hijack the thread, but Daniel, you’re right about the melting polymers. What was especially curoius is that we thought of that first. It was one of those ‘Duh’ moments that you can only have when you’ve got a dozen chemists and engineers that all miss the problem at once. 
But the curious thing was that we went on to isolate the light and heat. We exposed the anodize to the fusing temperature (about 650F as I recall) and nothing happened. We then exposed it to the intense light (hundreds of thousands of lumens) without the heat, and the dye faded to clear. Odd, isn’t it? We hadn’t expected that at all. The particular anodize we used had an undocumented photo-sensitivity. Again, that has nothing to do with whistles, but I thought you’d find it interesting.
I guess a Chemist wouldn’t know much about applied Physics…
Contrary to popular belief, Color does not exsist. It is the texture/atomic alignment of an object that reflects specific EM wavelengths of light/photons. Our eyes pick up these reflected EM wavelengths of light through “sympathetic” harmonics in the rods and cones of our eyes. All 5 of our human senses use the Electro-Magnetic Spectrum.
In simple terms, The full spectrum light of the Fuser Lamp changed the internal atomic “shape” of the pigmentation. Ever wonder why the full spectrum light of the Sun fades wallpaper and curtains? The constant bombardment of photon particles acts just like a sand blaster. The molecular structure degrades until no light/photons are reflected and the material becomes “clear/transparent” to our eyes. Q.E.D.!
Oh, it wasn’t that no one understood it, they just hadn’t anticpated it.
Wow - touch, taste and smell as well?
Yeah, I’m with you. And hearing is mechanical.
Yes, there are mechanical components to some of our senses, and I could see how one could argue all of them as being dependant on electro-chemical reactions, but the electro-magnetic spectrum? Please elaborate.
I own a MK Low whistle. Although it’s a terrific whistle, I find it a little sleepy when the weather’s warm… Moreover, my hands get sweaty quite easily in hot weather conditions. Misha claims on its site that anodized whistles last longer.
Yeah. Do anodised whistles last longer? I wonder if the anodising holds up well around the mouth peice.
cheers, Deasan
There shouldn’t really be any effects on the anodization from saliva under most conditions. Normal saliva has a neutral to slightly acidic pH and the Al-oxide layer of the anodization withstands this without any effect. I guess the only thing that you could do that (possibly) could have any effect is if you drink a lot of mineral water with a high pH when you play your whistle. It would have to have a pretty high pH to have any effect on the anodization and under those conditions the saliva would dissolve the Aluminum too. 
I would say that anodized whistles last slightly longer and that the anodization holds equally well around the mouth piece.
Cheers,
Anders
Good point that Thomas made. Incidentally, the same thing applies to homemade CD roms.
Many people putting their family picture albums on CD-ROs at home may find in a few years that pigment changes and will no long function. If you have your family album on CD, move it to a more secure source. Most commercial CD’s won’t do this because the process of making it is different.
I’m not sure I understand the claim that anodized whistles last longer. Do un-anodized whistles wear out? An aluminum whistle should outlive the player, I would think. Certainly the anodization, being a thin surface, would wear away in time from around the mouthpiece and tone holes, but that’s just mechanical wear. I can’t imagine anodization making a whistle more scratch and dent resistant. If anything, a scratch would appear more distinct against an anodized surface.
I’ve never owned an anodized whistle, but I used to carry one of those aluminum can openers and a small ‘Maglite’ type flashlight on my keychain. They both looked like the devil in short order as the anodize wore and scratched away. While an anodized whistle might be very handsome out of the box, I would think it would get very ugly after a while.
I could see one manufacturer claiming that his anodization process lasted longer than another’s (perhaps being more wear resistant) and so look better longer, but I don’t see how it could improve the longevity of the whistle itself. If aesthetics are important, and one were to stop playing a whistle once it got beat up looking, then an anodized whistle would have a very short lifetime. I for one would not invest in that.
Here is what Maurice Reviol has to say regarding his anodised whisltes:
Well, it is untoward to argue with a eminent whistle maker, but I suspect he might be right for the wrong reasons.
While I certainly applaud his efforts to make a less slippery whistle (the only subject that our beloved MT Guru was ever forced to chastise me for ), he cannot defeat Moh’s Law: Any substance can be scratched by a substance of equal or greater hardness. This is why scratching glass is not a test of a diamond. Glass can scratch glass. There are harder and softer aluminum alloys, to be sure. He might well be making his whistles from T-6 or harder aluminum, but even so, they can, at least in theory, be scratched.
They sure are. Stick your finger in a hot lamp socket and feel the electricity, taste the ozone and smell the sizzling skin!