So I went to an enormous art store looking for various types of linseed oil. They had nothing described as “raw” linseed oil, but had “cold pressed”, “refined” (alkali extracted), “thickened”, linseed oils as well as linseed oil for the stand (easel?).
The only one of these that seems to be raw linseed oil is the “cold pressed” one (appparently the hardware store sells heat-pressed raw linseed oil). The problem (for me, anyway) is that the cold pressed linseed oil is quite expensive at $15 a bottle.
Does anyone out there have experience figuring out which linseed oil is right for keeping up wooden flutes?
A good alternative is to go to a health-food store and get flaxseed oil, which is the same thing as linseed oil but it’s food-grade. You have to keep it in the fridge. A small bottle should last you a year or more.
Depending on where you live, you may not even need to go to a health food store to buy flaxseed oil. I get mine at Whole Foods, which is a nationwide chain of organic grocery stores. I believe it doesn’t need to be refrigerated until after you open the bottle, so it will probably be found on the shelf with the other cooking oils rather than in the refigerator case. Another alternative to flaxseed/linseed oil that a lot of flute players use is almond oil. I keep hearing that you need to get it with Vitamin E added to keep it from going rancid, but I’ve never worried about that when buying oils of any kind and you know I’ve never had any oil go rancid on me. But I guess it’s a consideration. Really, almost any food grade oil will work - I know at least one flute player who uses olive oil. You might want to vary your choice of oil depending on what you’re having for dinner the night of the session, in deference to those sitting downstream from you. If you have the almond-crusted flounder, go with the almond oil, but for the garlicky pasta dish choose olive oil. Big Mac? I guess the generic Wesson oil would work. Wouldn’t want to mix and match…
Many (but not all) food oils already have anti-rancidity ingredients added, I think. I’ve had food oil go rancid before, but thankfully have never had it happen on an instrument.
When I first got my Olwell flute back in 1992, Patrick wasn’t as specific in his oiling instructions as he is now. He said to use linseed oil, so I went to the hardware store and bought a gallon jug labelled “linseed oil” and started using it. A year or so later, I was around when he warned someone else about the difference between raw and boiled linseed oil, and to only use the raw kind because the other would build up on the inside of the flute like furniture varnish, sealing it off and ruining your flute. Until then, I wasn’t even aware there were different kinds of linseed oil! So I went home and looked at my gallon jug, and sure enough it was the banned boiled kind. I immediately quit using it (hiding my shame from Patrick and all others, until now), but fortunately there had been no adverse effects on the flute. Probably that was because even then I didn’t oil all that often. (Now I hardly ever do - usually only when I get so frustrated by a bump in my playing that I’ll try anything, so why not oil the flute and see if that helps?) I guess daily applications of the boiled oil might build up severely after a year or so, but if you only put it on every couple of months it would take years before adverse effects would start showing up.
Sorry for the stupid question, but what’s wrong with Bore Oils? Why do/would makers of Bore Oils for flute waste their time and perhaps money producing/packaging something that isn’t as good as a simple inexpensive home brew (e.g. walnut oil + Vitamine C)?
You might want to do a search for “oil” and “oiling” on the forum as the topics of oils and the frequency of oiling have been discussed here in depth quite a bit. My understanding (which may be wrong, I haven’t been paying much attention) is that bore oils contain mineral oils that may be harmful to wood over many years of use. On the other hand, some flute makers recommend bore oil for their flutes, so the jury’s probably still out on that question.
The best advice seems to be to follow the maker’s advice for the type of oil to use on your flute. If you didn’t buy from a maker, I’d use either flaxseed oil or almond oil, which are readily available.
I have it easy in this regard, as the maker of my flute told me “don’t oil it.” So I don’t. Even when I had flutes in the past that I oiled, I didn’t oil them more than once or twice a year. I’ve never had any cracks or other problems.
It’s a six-key flute made by Bryan Byrne in grenadilla (African blackwood). Bryan didn’t always advise his customers to not oil their flutes, although he always advised them to oil sparingly. He may have told me not to oil mine because he knows that I play my flute almost every day so it stays well “hydrated” and because he knows I take care of my flutes, swabbing them out, keeping them in a humidified container, etc.
But really, I’ve been playing wooden flutes for over 20 years now and have owned six flutes during that time. None of them have cracked, and I hardly ever oiled any of them. All were blackwood except for my boxwood Wilkes, which I haven’t oiled much either although it was pretty well impregnated with oil when I got it and it doesn’t ever seem to have dried out. Chris did tell me to keep that flute “fairly glistening” with oil, advice I may end up regretting having ignored, but so far (7 or 8 years now) so good.
I often wonder where the “Boiled Linseed Oil Is Evil” thing got started. I it’s funny even that folks (not you specifically John) should suggest that using boilding linseed will ruin and instrument by causing a hard build up, and yet in another breath, or thread, lament the problem of oils not polymerizing sufficiently to act as somewhat of a moisture barrier… Can’t have it both ways, can we?
von Huene have been using Boiled linseed oil many years, with no problems. This on, arguably, the finest wooden recorders and traverso’s made over the last 40 years. One would think that if serious problems or drawbacks were to be discovered, they would have done so by now.
I believe the idea that boiled linseed will cause problems stems from the habit a rare few folks have of seriously overoiling their flute bores, and/or failing to properly swab out any excess oil after letting it soak in for a few hours. This could cause problems, but other than that, having an oil that WILL polymerize rather quickly (over the course of 24-48 hours, is highly desireable, otherwise you are more or less wasting your time as any oil you get into wood which doesn’t polymerize, will simply be more or less immediately displaced during your next playing session or two. At the very least, unpolymerized oil will be virtually useless as a vapor barrier, which is essentially the whole point in oiling it the first place.
