Bought an Oak whistle a while back here in Dublin, unfortunately the mouthpiece has the very nasty chemical smell and lip numbing effect described on this board previously. Washed it, but to no effect and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. So my question is: is it worth keeping it for the barrel?
The tweakers will give you better answers but, at the very least, you could fit another head and experiment with tweaking.
Alternatively, you might inlcude a book and package it for sale to kids.
Oaks are wonderful barrels. I’ve put one on a Feadog head, and it’s much better than the Feadog with its own shaft. Also, the Oak has one of the most in-tune cross-fingered C naturals.
Definitely keep both the mouthpiece and barrel.
Oak tubes are very good, and you may find another whistlehead plays better on that tube than on its original one. And, of course, you can get a Gary Humphrey retrofit head or a Mack Hoover Whitecap (or both) for it.
I would say, put the whistlehead somewhere it will be exposed to air and forget about it. Check it every six months or so and eventually it should finish outgassing and become neutral. It might take a year or more (or less), but that whistlehead should eventually be OK.
Best wishes,
Jerry
I got a Hoover Whitecap for mine and it’s nice. I recommend sending the barrel to Mack for fitting because the Oak tubes seem to be a little thicker and the fit is snug.
Whitecap
Save the mouthpiece, attach a light fabric or paper sleeve and give it to someone you don’t much like for a party noisemaker.
I second this recommendation. My Whitecap fit on my Oak barrel with little trouble, and it’s a fine whistle now (and quite striking looking, really, with that shiney nickel body and white head).
Redwolf
Oh! The title of this thread confused me! Mack and I had been discussing oak wood, and oak barrels, a couple days ago. I read oak barrel and I thought of oak wood barrels. I saw the thread and thought, “you can’t make a barrel out of poison oak!”
Also, it’s hard to get the pickle smell out of some of those old oak barrels.
That’s funny. I was just looking at my white oak jo, and thinking that it might make a nice whistle. The jo (actually, “o” is long, but I don’t seem to have a macron available) is a short staff, about an inch in diameter, and the wood seems relatively smooth and dense, in contrast to my red oak bokken (wooden swords), which have that sort of heavily-pitted look. (I have a lot of odd martial arts stuff left over from my Aikido days.)
If you like the sound of the whistle, you could cover the parts of the fipple that touch your lips with tape of some sort. An alcohol wash might get out some remaining manufacturing chemicals.
I would think that a poison oak whistle or flute would make cocuswood sensitization problems look trivial 
I must be luck because neither of my Oaks (D and C) gives me any allergic reaction. I don’t play the D that much anymore (I have other whistles that get more playtime) but still like it quite a bit. The C gets played some every day - I keep it in my desk at work.
I’ll second the “keep it around unwrapped until it finishes outgassing” advice - Oaks are my favorite cheap whistles.
Thanks to all you for your advice!
Jerry
In the south it is not pickle smell in the Oak barrels.
Ron
Further insight into the Oak problem, btw: I had dropped an oak in the woods,
(among birches, actually, thanks for asking), and not found it again until the following year,
meaning it had suffered all kinds of extremes of hot/cold/damp/dry (this is vermont woods
we’re talking about), and lo and behold it has the ‘chemical smell’ and numb-lip effect that people have talked about.
So, I’m thinking the effect is caused by poor treatment, like storing in a 120+ degree warehouse for example, or a similarly extremely high (or low) temperature container car on a railroad siding somewhere…
–Chris
I guess I’ll have to stop telling people to leave their Oak whistleheads in a Vermont birch woods for a year.
That’s always worked for me, though. Were these paper birches, white birches, yellow birches or river birches? It may be that they were the wrong kind of birch trees.
Best wishes,
Jerry