I just started on the whistle a few weeks ago, with a Chieftain Low G. Being extremely new at this, I am looking for tips on how to best clean it, both inside and out. If this is relevant, it is made of aluminium alloy and is the non-tunable version.
Thanks in advance
Welcome to the board!
You are correct. Keeping your whistle clean is important. Especially in the windway as even small particles can greatly affect the sound.
I do not have the same whistle as you so I will keep my comments general.
Most metal whistles clean up quite nicely in plain old warm, soapy water. Rinse and dry the outside with a soft rag. I use a pipe cleaner (with the sharp metal end kept short) to run through the windway.
- Always check instructions that come with your whistles for specific instructions especially with wooden whistles or wooden fipples.
I am also partial to a flute cleaner for the inside of my finger tubes. You can make one by getting 2" x 2" piece of felt. Put a tiny hole in the middle and put a thick piece of string or shoe lace (longer than the finger tube) into the hole. Tie a knot so that the string doesn’t slip through. At the other end of the string, weight it down with a fishing weight, heavy bead or a bolt.
To use, remove the mouthpiece from the whistle. Drop the weight into the whistle and pull the felt through the finger tube.
Best of luck!
Sandy Jasper
I don’t know if this is safe for aluminum alloy, but it works fine for brass. I bought a second hand brass whistle which was so full of crud on the inside that it didn’t play well. Reasoning that the crud was mostly an accumulation of food residue from the mouth of a previous owner, I soaked the whistle in warm water to which I added a few of those tablets which are used for cleaning dentures. (No, I don’t have false teeth, at least not yet. 
) When I rinsed it out, it was “clean as a whistle” inside. For this procedure I constructed a long narrow pan using heavy duty aluminum foil.
Denture tabs! Gotta love it!
S.J.
Aluminum whistles clean nicely with a dab of toothpaste on cloth or very fine grade steel wool. I use a pipe cleaner too, with the end bent around.
Don’t mess with the ‘blade’…the sharp thing that cuts the airway. Dull that and you’re going to change your sound significantly!
A tip. Anybody wearing contact lenses can squirt a little of the liquid done the fipple. I’m afraid I scrounge the free sachets from all the opticians in the area when I can. Scored well in one place when I went back twice in a montha nd was asked what I was doing I explained and got given a 75ml bottle of solution and it’s cracking for the actual fipples. It’s really only an aqueous soapy water solution made to rip contact lens wearers off so I was informed by a Recorder player of Hopf and many wooden ones that need good care.
Selkie…
A word of caution. As an opthalmic tech by day, and having fit folks for contacts for several years, I can tell you that the CL solutions on the market today are not generaly ANYTHING I’d want near my lips. Many conatin chemicals that are designed to disinfect and some are quite potent. One of our most popular brands is based on a VERY concentrated hydrogen peroxide formula that I’ve seen eat clean through peoples hard contact lenses. (they were supposed to use a different solution obviously, but that’s not the point here).
So just be VERY careful. I think the denture cleaner is a much safer route as it’s designed for things that are supposed to end up in your mouth anyway.
Hope this helps.
Bri~