Has anyone ever had any experience with oiling a polimer flute?
I have heard that they play better after being oiled.
I would think that as it dried it would just get gummy as it polymerized since it cant soak into the material.
Any help here is appreciated.
Thanks
Scott McCallister
Never heard of it, Scott. If the bore is nice and smooth, I don’t think it would make a difference (just guessing, here) unless an oiled bore would allow condensation drops to be shed more readily than the unoiled polymer surface would normally allow. That might make for better playing; I don’t oil my M&E, FWIW.
never tried it but I wonder how RainX would work on a glass flute…
Oooohh…interesting idea!
Hi Scott,
I’ve owned a polymer flute in the past and never found the need to oil it, although I’ve heard that some people do. Why do this I’m not sure since we oil wooden flutes to prevent (or at least slow) their absorbtion of water. In that context it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to oil a flute made of plastic/polymer, a material that is already impervious to water.
That said, I’m pretty sure that if you oiled a polymer flute it probably wouldn’t cause any more damage than oiling a wooden flute.
Those are my thoughts…
All the best,
Wes
Oh good! Hey, Wes, I’m actually getting tunes…well, slow tunes, out of this flute!
This may sound wierd, but…
In the winter months, my skin gets so dry that my M&E is very slippery in my hands. I put some hand cream on the flute and rub off all the excess with a towel. That makes it just tacky enough to hold.
If I put the hand cream on my hands, i get the opposite problem, hands being too oily.
Bottom line is, you’re not going to harm the flute, so if you have a compelling reason to oil it, go for it.
regards,
jb
Here’s a snippet from the woodenflute list on this issue:
I had a natter with Desi Seery a while back and he reckoned that
“oiling”
the plastic flute with what we here in UK call liquid paraffin would
help
keep things going nicely and he was right. I reckon a thin coating of
the
stuff smooths out the bore surface and also makes it easier for the bore
surface to ‘shed’ droplets of condensation. However it works, after
‘oiling’
the tone is smoother and the flute more responsive.
A word of caution: I’m in UK and have no idea where you are so it could
be
that ‘liquid paraffin’ means something quite different in your neck of
the
woods. …
He determined that the uk’s liquid paraffin is usa’s mineral oil,
similar to Johnson’s baby oil, for those of us usa seery owners. (not
lamp oil!)
We also discussed the point of getting the profile of the upper lip to
match the curvature of the far edge of the blow hole.
I think these 2 points, the bore inner surface and the mouth surface,
would likely be the causes of the gurgling/warbling mystery sound.
I don’t oil my Seery FWIW, and I think it sounds great (better every day as I adjust to it - my playing in the first week on this flute doesn’t do it justice compared to now).
Eric
Hi Tygress,
Glad to hear that the flute is treating you well! I just got a new one from Hammy Hamilton there at the end of August so I ended up being fluteless for a couple of months. I still wish I could have kept both, your flute was/is a great instrument and I had a TON of fun with it… lots and lots of sessions.
The new flute is awesome too, Hammy knows what he’s doing for sure! He was in St. John’s to play at the folk festival there in August so he acutually hand delivered my flute. That was really cool! He was staying with some friends of mine so we had the chance to chat a bit. Not only can he make a wicked flute but he’s a really interesting guy to sit down and have a conversation with.
Keep in touch!
Wes
OK, ok, I have followed this thread for a while, and I’ve kept my mouth shut, but I HAVE to ask this. Please don’t be offended.
Doesn’t it seem that if a polymer flute needs oiling to smooth out the bore, that the bore’s not well-made? One of the advantages to using polymer, I would imagine, is that you should be able to polish the bore to near-absolute-smoothness . . . none of those grain-ridges found in timbers.
Maybe Boehm flute players should oil their sterling bores . . . 
Stuart
Stuart - I agree with you completely. The bore on my Seery is perfectly smooth. However, it did come oiled inside from Desi (although Frank Simpson was the middle man in the deal - I highly doubt he oiled it). I left the oil/stuff in there for two weeks, but then I washed the flute out and noticed absolutely no change in either tone or spit flow once it was cleaned.
Personally, I’m sure Desi oils his wood flutes, and my guess is he simply oils the polymers too, because, well, you just oil flutes…
BTW - For all you polymer naysayers out there, my Seery took two bad spills this week - one from 4 feet off a shelf where it hit a concrete step in the middle of the long body section thanks to my child’s simian tendency to climb anything in sight and the other when my two dogs were playing chase, knocked over a table, and flipped the flute into the wall - it’s still in perfect shape! Maybe a blackwood could handle that as well, but it would make me seriously nervous to find out.
Eric
I use “Armor-All” protectant on the inside of my Susatos etc. and they shed condensation better. The outside I polish with Acetone(nail polish remover) and a soft cotton rag. Make sure the rag is wet with Acetone, not damp, or it will stick to the plastic.
PVC makers/owners take note: Acetone will remove the printing on PVC and CPVC pipes and will polish rough sanded areas smooth.
Hi folks,
Yeh that was me over on the woodieL with the warbling Seery. The bore
on my 3rd hand Seery (I dont’ know how old it actually is) is not smooth
up by the embouchure, there are scratches in there. Oiling helped to
smooth it out and it sounded better. But also, I had a crumbly loose cork
that was not keeping its seal. Fixing that helped too.
My first flute was an M&E and it was made impeccably, oiling did nothing
to improve it since it was smooth as silk inside.
Cheers, Lesl
When I went to fetch my delrin Seery from the Man himself, he oiled it with liquid paraffin oil saying the sound gets better. It actually did improve.
During the last few days my flute has not sounded nor behaved like herself, so I decided to try washing it up and oiling it, this time with olive oil. Voilá! The sound is back with all its brightness and reediness.
An anecdote tells me that years ago when Desi had just started making delrin flutes and sold a player called Dave Murphy his instrument Dave started having similar problems with the sound. Dave complained about this to Desi in a session in a pub in Bray, Co. Wicklow. Desi said “Well, ya haven’t given 'er a drink lately”, poured some Guinness into the flute and the sound was back.
I guess he’s shifted to oil after realising that flutes cannot taste. 
Markus - I still find oiling a polymer odd. I know my bore is smooth as silk, and I just can’t see what oiling it would do for it. I did try oiling it, but noticed no real change. I’ll likely try again. How often do you oil yours?
Then again, I’m not shy about eating and drinking when playing the Seery (something I wouldn’t do with my wood flute) so maybe it’s getting some nice orange juice, guinness, whatever as a coating? Thank goodness you can wash it up so easily!
Eric
I agree with you about the oddity, but both Seery and a certain friend of his called Éamonn de Barra recommended the oiling and to my flute it DOES do something, weird as it is.
It could be that the fact that Desi tells people to oil his flutes might actually tell us something about the smoothness of his bores and his accuracy of finishing. He seems like the sort of fellow whose hands might be a little shaky more than once in a while.