I am getting my new Killarney Brass D soon, and I just have some questions regarding the patina on brass.
Does polishing the patina on brass harm the build of the whistle? I am wondering what will happen if one polishes it too much: would the tube become thinner and thinner and thinner… and eventually disappear one day?
Why does the patina develop differently on the whistle body and near the holes? Is there any way to get an evenly developed patina regardless of hole/body?
How can I take care of a brass whistle? Am I supposed to wash it with water…? What about soap, clorox, etc. …?
I washed my Feadog and Waltons brass whistles with soapy steel wool, and it removed the patina instantly without doing any harm to the whistles. But those were cheap whistles, so maybe you’d want to be more careful with Killarneys? Not sure.
As a general note, patina is not usually much of an annoyance on brass whistles to begin with. Sure, it will form, but not usually in a way that’s annoying or ugly. It usually just makes the metal look a bit more brown/dark. I usually just leave it there.
If you leave a whistle sitting around and don’t play it for years and years (which is what I did with my two cheap brass whistles), you can get some ugly patina that feels sticky and nasty, and that should be removed. But I’ve never had a brass whistle that I played regularly that got that stuff on it.
The only reason for cleaning the body of my Killarney is to remove a build-up of grease and breath condensate from the tuning slide, to make sure it doesn’t jam up. If I cleaned that down to shiny brass but left the rest of the whistle with a patina, the resulting tidemark would look a bit weird.
It’s usually getting the beginnings of a new patina within a week anyway, and I doubt cleaning it does it much harm. The heads of all my whistles regularly get plonked head-first into a mug with an inch and a half of hot soapy water, to clean the mouthpiece and windway. Afterwards I rinse them, wipe them dry, and leave them to air.
Don’t overthink these things. You won’t make you whistles disappear polishing them. If you want to clean them at all, Brasso worked fine for me for years until someone on the forum recommended Cape Cod polishing cloths as a bit more friendly, so I tried that. Does the job. It’s a good idea to keep grease, sweat etc from the metal by cleaning the whistle with a microfibre cloth to avoid build up.
On the other hand, benign neglect isn’t the worst approach. I don’t clean whistles often, just when they become really filthy and really need it. Renaissance wax helps a great deal protecting the metal from getting dirty quickly.
A bit of Vaseline (with or without a bit of beeswax) will keep the slide going smoothly.
It depends a bit on the chemistry of your skin. I have had whistles over time that had a heavy patina but perfectly clean, shiny spots around the holes and on the back where the thumbs went.
I think that’s most people’s experience. Patina develops where you don’t touch the whistle, because handling polishes it off. If you try to clean up antique brass door handles, the backplates will never come up as well as the grips.
This thread is what I had been looking for. I do have an additional question though. I have a low G brass whistle I am thinking of selling. Should I clean up the brass before listing it, if I decide to sell?
I would not polish a Brass Whistle you are selling, here’s why. If someone like me is buying the Whistle, the patina is a big bonus selling feature as I like the way a patina looks. On the other hand you can’t really add the patina for selling purposes. Those with a whistle having a Patina however can polish it very quickly. So for fans of a shiny brass Finish, if you polish it that will be a big Plus. The big question is what percent of Whistle Players entertaining buying a Brass Whistle would prefer it to be shiny vs having it have a Patina
BTW I currently have no Brass Whistles, I do however have a Rosewood Cloos Fife with long Brass Ferrules and I get great enjoyment of looking at the Ffe because of that.
