I have a Healy flute headjoint that’s partially lined, I assume I need to oil the portion closer to the stopper that’s not lined. Should I just use the cleaning stick and oily rag and then do my best to wipe off the liner with a clean rag?
thanks,
Eddie
That’s pretty much what I’ve been doing with my Hamilton and it seems to work ok.
I try to minimize the amount of oil that gets on the metal, but realistically, some always will.
Just be sure you remove it quickly before the oil can polymerize!
–James
It’s also important IMHO to oil the end grain. That’s where the tubules and veins in the wood end, and a good place for the humidity to come in or out, so oil it.
When I bought my Healy Skip recommended taking the cork out (attached to the end cap and hard to do) and run the oil rag through with the flute totally in tact. Let it stand on a flute stand (I made a dowel glued to a 6" quare platform) for about and hour or so then run a swab through it. Not too easy getting out the end cap/cork. I think this is all on his web site.
BillG
I would agree with this. It’s surprising to me how quickly oil will be absorbed into the endgrain even in the case of resinous woods like blackwood.
AAAAAAUUUUUGGGHHHHH!!!
I’ve never oiled mine!
Mary
It’s been frequently argued how much oiling helps at all, particularly with blackwood; you may be a case in point to prove it may not be necessary at all, assuming the humidity level (ambient, and assuming you play often) is kept up. I usually find that oiling my blackwood flute is a waste of time and oil, except perhaps in the dead of a dry northeast winter, where it might take in just a little; otherwise, it stays on the outside of the wood 'til I play it and wipe it away. Boxwood and cocus seem to need it far more.
Someone – was it Brad? – experimented on a few separate flutes by not oiling some, and oiling others, and found that no real difference in behavior (cracking or leaking, etc.) occurred on the non-oiled ones. Oiling generally makes us feel we’re doing something to preserve the wood, but - particularly in the case of blackwood - we may not be doing all that much.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that if you haven’t been oiling the inside of your partially-lined head, Mary, and you haven’t had any problems, I wouldn’t be too worried about the neglect.
Gordon
Thanks for the reply, Gordon!!!
It’s funny that I usually oil my flutes regularly, but not the heads ~ although I had wondered at times if I should… Have never taken the cork/endcap off, either (afraid of wrecking some sort of good mojo or whatever)
I live in a pretty humid environment, and play the flutes as frequently as I can, so they probably stay pretty well “moisturized”, anyway. I think I won’t worry about it, then.
Oil can help keep out excess moisture, but this is limited in Blackwood & other resinous woods. If wood doesn’t want to be a flute it in time it will crack whether it’s oiled or not - that’s just the nature of the particular stick you start out with. Oiling does help your tone, the oil reduces friction in the bore. Matt Molloy is famous for oiling the living daylights out of his flute before he plays. Eddie, if you get some oil on the tenon silver it’s no big deal just wipe it off, if you use almond oil you won’t have to worry about it causing a sticky build up. Take care of that head-joint kid-o it was one of my first.
The earliest mentions of oiling in the flute literature were about tone, not about preserving the wood. The idea is to make a smoother interior, compensating for whatever roughness was left when the maker reamed the wood by hand. I guess modern flutes made by lathe or gun drill are naturally smoother anyway, but the oil helps.
Oiling the heck out of an old flute, like M&M does, can help fill small cracks. Oiling the C/C# pewter plugs in old flutes may help them seal too.
g
Aww, I feel special now.
Will do. It sounds great so far although the keys are a very different experience. I imagine it will take some time to adjust to.
Eddie
Well, to be precise, the oil can help the flute’s tone; if you ain’t got it, you’re on your own!
But seriously, oiling helps the bore become smoother – this is particularly important with woods like boxwood, and you’ll notice it in your tone. Old flutes that have been oiled for ages can have bores like glass, anyway, but oil temporarily seals things up. I just feel that in modern blackwoods, the difference is minimal at best.
I’m not advocating not oiling, BTW, I just think that in the case of blackwood flutes even the tone will be relatively unchanged, for much the same reasons, as the wood itself is pretty oily and not rough at all inside, with a modern lathe. No question a newly oiled boxwood flute will sound better, though. Still, a few minutes of warm-up play, and you have the same results from condensation as with oil.
Matt’s oiling prior to playing may be the result of a habit borne for performance; oiling beforehand can quick-fix the wait for your own hot-air moisture to seal everything, and if you don’t mind oiling a flute, you also don’t mind that little will sink in and most will dribble out, since you’re gonna just oil again, and the tone will be there from the first tune out, rather than waiting the ten minutes or more.
Gordon
Yah, -Tone improvement has been the result of keeping the flute oiled: when I’m lax on oiling the flute must “water up” for a while for good polyphonic tone. Its maker Casey Burns recommends oiling for flexibility of the wood as tonewoods are naturally brittle.
-I oil my partially lined headjoint the lazy way-by running a soft oiled cloth
rubber-banded over a smoothed chopstick up the slide into the great northern chamber, then swabbing out the slide portion before the flute sits aside in absorbent repose. Getting the cork/chamber edge oiled can be done by dribbling some oil into the head and letting gravity run it down onto the cork circle as one rotates the head tilted for oil distribution around the cork/bore edge. -Removing the end cap allows end grain oiling and coverage of the bore north of the cork. Best practice is to remove the cork for full bore oiling, but this is more work, and the cork must be repositioned accurately, and I haven’t removed mine yet. Careful use of a soft q-tip is, I think, OK for oiling the embouchure as there is end grain exposed here as well as in tone hole chamfers and undercuts. Don’t even think about sticking any hard tool into the embouchure.
-Caution: Avoid hardwood dowel for a swab stick unless its hard/sharp ends have been chamfered. A sharp or splintered dowel end can penetrate soft oiling cloth and scratch the bore during oiling. Its best to preserve (and augment) smoothness of the bore rather than degrade it. Smoothing down chopstick corners & square sides is a good idea if chopsticks are used for bore oiling sticks.
is there ever any need for oiling the head and delrin cork in a fully lined head of a wooden flute?
None whatsoever.
Hammy recommends oiling his flutes daily for a week and then weekly for a month or two when they’re new. I did this in my cocobolo flute, and this thing got so oily that I was getting beads of condensation on the blow edge. It actually felt like a whistle clogging. I think cocobolo is at least as oily as blackwood, and I was obviously overdoing it. I backed off on the oiling and it hasn’t happened since, although I still do swab the embouchure hole after 15 minutes or so.
thanks Charlie!
Oops, I should add that oiling the embouchure hole, and possibly the wood around it, is a good idea (especially if you have caustic sweat as I apparently do).
thanks, i knew that part all right!
For the cognoscenti present, how does Mopane compare to Blackwood with respect to oiling? IE, is oiling more necessary (or less) as either a preservative or tone-enhancer?
Oiling is a good way to clean a flute. Even if you don’t think it protects the wood, I’ve never heard that normal oil will hurt a flute.
But, I just read a post on here or woodenflute list that oiling can bring out things that people are allergic to in the wood. Maybe I’d find another way to clean a cocus flute.
Sincerely,
-George