OK, just oiled a blackwood flute (GLP keyless, MDT, Integral foot), which confirms our suspicions that blackwood absorbs much less than some other timbers.
You’ll remember that the Cooktown Ironwood soaked up 6.6 gms in the first oiling. The blackwood flute absorbed only 0.5gm (I think probably more fair to say it adsorbed 0.5gm - given the significant surface area of inside and outside a flute, that wouldn’t be a very thick coating!).
An 8-key in cocuswood is next …
Terry[/b]
Just an observation: I oiled a flute yesterday that was bought in the US by fiddler Paddy Killoran in the 1930s, brought over to Ireland where it was in the hands of one of the great players of the time. It was played continuously (being carried around in the coat pocket wrapped in brown paper) until the 80s when the owner had a stroke and subsequently died during the early 90s. It has lain dormant since.
This flute was never oiled at all in the past 75 years. The owner, like many of his generation, ran water through it before playing. His widow said yesterday: ‘I never heard of anyone oiling flutes ever’ (and she knows her fluteplayers).
Anyhow, the flute was actually in quite reasonable shape, even though it look terribly neglected before oiling. There was some surface cracking both inside and out but only very superficial.
The almond oil I put on disappeared into it like a shot, I oiled the outside twice in the space of an hour , both layers of oil were mostly absorbed (I did the inside as well ofcourse, thickly but the bore seemed to absorb more slowly).
Just for the fun of it, the flute in action during the 1930s:
Cool, Peter! Just for curiosity, what is the flute made of? This is only observation on my own, but I’ve noted that my cocuswood flute absorbs the least oil, the blackwood flutes don’t absorb much but they do vary with humidity and individual tightness of grain – and the boxwood flute just sucks it up almost like bamboo. I know nothing about ebony … BTW, there’s no chance that flute is ebonite, is there – oh, if it’s got superficial cracks, probably not.
And you say it has no cracks through it? And the joints feel pretty solid? [I’m asking all these questions for my own edification, which is (hopefully) better explained below]
I’ve been pondering all this for about five years now, ever since I read Fintan Vallely’s advice against pouring Guinness into your flute. I thought it was wacky at the time, but … John Skelton once told me he has a photo of a Breton player holding his bombarde up to a running garden hose. And I saw Damien Stenson pour a little bottled water into the blowhole of one of his (I think bamboo) flutes during a Teada gig. And I’ve definitely noticed a difference in wet flutes vs. dry … for example, my flutes always feel a lot better about a half-hour or hour into a session and I’m pretty convinced it isn’t just me sucking less 
; I really do think the swelling from the moisture seals up any tiny leaks and perhaps even smooths the bore grain? So perhaps wetting the flute is just a faster way to get there, esp. if the flute has a hairline crack or loose joints/tuning cork or funky pad seats or what have you.
After about 10 hours’ total playing St. Pat’s Day my blackwood flute was pretty thoroughly soaked – despite a good oiling the night before and periodic swabbing throughout the day – and was more responsive and easier to play than ever.
So there’s what I’ve been thinking about for a while – moisture causes swelling, which can be helpful if you have leaks.
But nope. I still ain’t dumpin’ no flutes in the stock tank. And I ain’t advocatin’ that anybody else try it, neither. Not on your life. 
Anyway, hope I haven’t wasted anybody’s time here; just curious and thinking out loud … (always dangerous!)
Cathy, it was a blackwood flute, the cracks didn’t seem to go all the way through the, lined, head joint was fine, there was a hairline in the barrel and a few hairline cracks in the body of the flute. There was one that seemed fairly wide on the inside but it didn’t go through to the outside. The joints etc were all pretty good actually. The flute played.
Pouring water, or Guinness, is something I have heard about often. Apparently the old players thought it worked wonders. Martin Rochford told me one story of how the Tulla ceiliband did their first radio appearance in 1948. One of the fluteplayers took the flutes to the toilets and flushed tapwater through them. Willie Clancy was furious as he thought the flutes had changed pitch and causewd the band to play out of tune. Martin added ‘and they weren’t asked back to play on the radio for another 25 years’.
Oiling is not something the old guys would have done. I was looking at Peter Horan’s flute last summer and thought it probably had never seen any oil or maintenance ever. It certainly looked that way.
Oddly, I’ve noticed similar effects even with my polymer flute - it’s friendlier when wet. Which makes little logical sense. It’s probably just the placebo effect.
Peter,
Pardon my ignorance, but who are the players in the photo and where was it taken?
Thanks,
B
I don’t know; if it’s got cork lapped joints I’d bet the cork can swell a tad? Sometimes even thread lapping soaks and makes a difference (hence Caterall’s advice for wrapping tenons with polyester thread rather than cotton) … Ever noticed how it can get pretty hard to take a wet flute apart?
Thank you for the story, Peter – that’s hilarious! And I wouldn’t be surprised if it changed the pitch a bit … probably put the flutes at true concert pitch for the first time in who knows how long, and ruined everyone’s life!?
They are Junior Crehan and Josie Hayes playing at the Dunsallagh Feis (just outside Miltown Malbay) in 1936. They were a duet that spanned 60 years and in their heyday they were, in the words of Joe Ryan ‘lovely, they were better than Sean Keane and Matt Molloy’. They also inspired ‘In Good Company’ which was dedicated to them.
Time to get back to the regular oil absorbtion of a new flute it just surprised me how much an old flute took.
Wormdiet - I think polymer flutes, and other flutes, play better when the moisture is flowing. At first, the condensation seems to form little doplets that don’t move much, but once a certain moisture level is obtained it flows more freely.
That’s my unscientific observation FWIW (which isn’t much).
Eric
Next time you do this, use another unoiled flute as a control–it’ll tell you how much of the variation you see is atmospheric moisture.
Err, actually, you’d need controls at all three stages–unoiled, one coat & two coats.
In fact, that would be an interesting experiment in itself; seeing how much difference oil makes to a flutes ability to absorb amtospheric moisture.
FWIW, many blues harp (harmonica) players like to douse their instruments in water before they play. I recall that it made the sound clearer, stronger and easier to get pitch bends - but the wood in the old Marine Band brand harps would swell and catch your lips!
Thanks Peter. I was guessing that it was the two of them, but I haven’t ever seen a photo of either of them before, so I wasn’t sure.
It’s really nice to put a face (or a photo at least) to a name. Thanks again for posting the photo.
Brendan
OK, promised cocus and here it is.
The victim this time is an 8-key Rudall Perfected (large bore, large holes) in cocus wood. Weight before oiling was 259 grams, weight after oiling 261.6gms, so it absorbed 2.6gms. Now, a couple of issues to cloud the comparisons - the other flutes were essentially oiled overnight, while this time we were out of town for two days and it spent all that time in the oil. Secondly, being an 8-key it has a long foot rather than a short foot integral with the right hand sections. Also more holes (key holes) presenting places where the oil has access to end grain. So for all those reasons, we could probably estimate that a cocus keyless dunked overnight would have absorbed maybe double the blackwood’s 1/2 gram, but still very much less than the Cooktown Ironwood’s 6.6 grams on first oiling. It’s a very fine grained timber - probably every bit as fine as blackwood, but without the resin blackwood exudes. Takes on a nice silky feel when oiled.
There’s a boxwood flute a bit further down the track and a Mopane one coming up soon - they should prove interesting, as long as I remember to weigh them before plunging them!
Terry
Terry, this is all very interesting (including Peter Laban’s stories about watering the flutes and so on).
However I would like to see your experiments extended to DELRIN.
Think I am mad do you? I assure you there’s method in the madness.
(Scientific method I hope). 
I think we can be very confident that Delrin will not absorb oil, although it would probably adsorb some. I’m not sure about using linseed on Delrin - it would probably form a film that would flake off, and the customer might find that a bit alarming!
I imagine you’re coming from one or both of two places:
that ascertaining any increase in mass of a Delrin flute would give us a reference datum for determining what is absorption and what is adsorbtion in wooden flutes,
to determine the potential validity of claims that oiling Delrin flutes improves their performance.
Let me know if there is a madness I hadn’t considered!
I think they are both good research issues, so I’ll give it some thought. I certainly don’t discount the oiling Delrin improves performance claim - it is likely tied up with boundary effect issues. It would also be interesting to see if adding a surfactant to Delrin would improve performance by preventing the build-up of lots of globules.
Sigh, so much to do, so little time!
Terry
Oh, and I forgot to mention, on the “watering the flute” issue, I am old enough to have witnessed this ceremony in its hayday. In London, in 1974, we would go to “The Favourite”, just off Holloway Road for the weekly music sessions. This is the pub where “Paddy in the Smoke” was recorded. These were not participation sessions as we now know them, but more like informal concerts. In the main session on “Sunday morning” (actually about noon, conveniently after Mass), Jimmy Power (fiddle), Reg Hall (piano) and Paddy Malynn (sp?) (box) were the mainstay. But if they spotted singers or musicians in the crowd, they would be hauled up for a few items.
On one such day, we (a bunch of Australian musicans) were hauled up and received a great reception, a statement about the power of alcohol to spread good will to people of all nations. As I came down, an old chap asked to look at my flute, which was a modern metal one (I hadn’t found a suitable wooden one at this stage). He pored over it, showing it to a friend and they both tried to work out where to put the fingers. I showed him and he tried to play it, but without much success. The thumb keys confounded him in particular. He said “you must be a very good flute player indeed to be able to play a flute like this”.
He then pulled out from his inside coat pocket his own flute, an old German flute, having received the nod from Jimmy that he was invited to play a few tunes a bit later. I took a close look - it was painted in epoxy in an attempt to seal the myriad small cracks, and clamped with Cheney hose clamps at the sockets to force the big ones closed. Inside was coated with a white crust. I could only get a few notes out of it, and found myself echoing his words, but with quite a different meaning. “You must be a very good flute player indeed to be able to play a flute like this”.
“We’d better give this a watering”, he said to his friend, and so one of them put a thumb over the end, while the other poured some Guinness from his pint into it. They sloshed it back and forth a few times, and rotated it to the limit they could without too much Guinness escaping from the finger holes. The thumb was then removed and the Guinness emptied solemny back into the glass for subsequent consumption.
The flute player (who’s name I can’t remember), then slipped his false teeth out and slipped them into the outside pocket of his coat - “can’t play with them” - and a few minutes later was called up to the stage. He was an older man, and so a little short for breath (no doubt exascerbated by the remaining leaks on the old flute), but he ripped through a few tunes with great style if not so much tone and tune. I could only wonder what he might have sounded like on a good flute.
The moisture would certainly have helped by closing up the many small fissures previous waterings had created, sealing leaking pads, etc, and reducing the boundary effect over the crusty lining of the bore.
No longer recommended practice!
Terry
wow
Well, you know the legend - after you die, you’re suspended above a vat containing all the liquor you’ve wasted in your lifetime. And if the level is high enough you can’t breath, to Hell with you. Wouldn’t want to take chances, after all 
Would Guinness contribute to the characteristic “dark” sound? If so, would you wet it with light beer before playing pop music? 
That’s great, Terry! Kinda disgusting, too!
This is from An Article about Lucy Farr, the Galway fiddler, and the dances back home:
“Lucy’s own job was to soak the flutes and she remembers getting into trouble because she used water from one of two pails set aside for her father’s morning tea rather than the one used for general purposes. Her mother found parts of flutes left overnight.”
I thought your statement “I think we can be very confident that Delrin will not absorb oil, although it would probably adsorb some” was a typo, or indicative of a mental lapse; or perhaps a Big Word. Sure enough, if anyone’s wondering:
“adsorption = the accumulation of gases, liquids, or solutes on the surface of a solid or liquid.”
Thanks Kevin.
I’m sure I’m just acting on some good advice - was it the Mad Hatter to Alice? - that one should never use a short word when a long word will do almost as well.
"We’ll all of us shortly be doomed,
To part with our plain understanding,
For intellect now has assumed,
An attitude truly commanding!
All ranks are so dreadfully wise,
Common sense is set quite at defiance,
And the child for its porridge that cries,
Must cry in the Language of Science."
—from “The March of Intellect”, an Irish broadside ballad argued by Colm O Lochlainn to be “One of Noll’s Effusions” (ie written by Oliver Goldsmith).
Terry