Hi,
A few posts down there was a thread about cleaning whistles, and everybody was sceptic.
But I have a serious question about cleaning a whistle.
I love the look of my brass whistles, and I think the discolouration is as it should be, it shows the are well used.
But on one of my aluminum whistles there is some strange oxidation, it doesn’t look great. (Between the front of the fipple and the window)
I tried washing fluid, but that didn’t help, but I am a bit hasitant with using more acidid fluids.
What is best to use?
I’d ask the maker. There was something called Naval Jelly available at hardware stores, that I used to use for oxidation on aluminum screen doors years ago. I have no idea what it would do to a whistle, but the maker of the instrument may have a better idea.
Send and email and a soft toothbrush and warm soapy water should do the trick according to Phil.
There is a great deal of variation in the way aluminium whistles react to different players bodily excretions. I’d reckon most people are pretty right, and a clean out with warm soapy water is fine to keep things smooth and clean, but i have had whistles back with major corrosion problems with breath and even finger deposits causing problems. A temporary solution is to dismantle (if you can) and physically clean the corrosion off all the affected parts and reassemble with a coating of vasoline to try to slow the corrosion down as much as possible. I suspect though, for those players with really strong reactions, that the only permanent cure would be to anodize all the aluminium components.