Certainly we can expect a lot faster take-up at the ends, but the ends are a long way apart and pretty small in surface area, so I think the majority of the oil is sticking to or slightly impregnating the side grain. Circumstantial evidence supporting that conclusion is that when I pull a blackwood flute out to drain, it remains wet all over overnight, but with a timber like Cooktown Ironwood or Boxwood, the surface dries quickly. That last bit of oil is clearly being sucked in the sides, not the ends, or the sides would stay wet.
It’s an attractive thought though that you could hook the end of the flute up to a pump pushing fine, warm oil into the end grain and hold it there till it comes gushing out the end grain at the other end! Add a single drop of superglue and the whole thing turns into … Hmmm, have we just invented Delrin?
It would be an interesting experiment to stand a head length piece of a light coloured wood, eg Mopani, in a tray of oil and see how long it took to make it up to the top. I’d have thought a while, because we’re dealing with heartwood, not sapwood - it’s the sapwood’s job to transport fluids, and the heartwood’s job to hold up the tree. Then again, where these trees come from, I imagine they are never really dripping with moisture. No Mopane Syrup on your pancakes in Tanzania!
The answer would I suspect be only as far as it took for capillary action to be balanced by gravity. Trees pull water up by cohesive tension, hence the splendidly named Cohesive Tension Theory. If you put one end in oil and applied a vacuum pump to the other that should work fine.
Second coat on the Mopane flute absorbed a further 1.2gms of oil, making a total of 4.1gms with the first coat of 2.9gms. So again, the Law of Diminishing Returns applies.
Well, this one won’t interest many people, as I think I’m the only maker who uses the Australian wood Gidgee. Gidgee is a very dense and fine timber from inland northern New South Wales. It’s a legume, and a member of the Acacia family.
Flute is a 6 key Rudall Perfected model. Before oiling weighed 252.8, after 254.9, an increase of 2.1 grams. Allowing for the extra surface area of a 6-key compared to a keyless, it’s probably 3 times more oil take-up than blackwood, and a bit less than cocus.
Adding it to our rough graph where one dash equals 0.5 gm, we see:
Yes, it probably isn’t exported. It’s from areas you wouldn’t like to see large amounts of trees removed from - I imagine small amounts get on the boutique timbers market when blocks are cleared for houses, that sort of thing. Not reliable enough to base an export industry on.
Probably better to look for timbers with the right qualities that are available in your area. Gilmer Woods seems to be a good supplier in the US.
Well, this one won’t interest many people, as I think I’m the only maker who uses the Australian wood Gidgee. Gidgee is a very dense and fine timber from inland northern New South Wales. It’s a legume, and a member of the Acacia family.
Flute is a 6 key Rudall Perfected model. Before oiling weighed 252.8, after 254.9, an increase of 2.1 grams. Allowing for the extra surface area of a 6-key compared to a keyless, it’s probably 3 times more oil take-up than blackwood, and a bit less than cocus.
Did I mention the rest of the destructive analysis process where we grind the flute into dust, irradiate it with gamma radiation and carry out a flame colour test?
