I seem to recall Craig Fischer telling me that he soaks his chanters in oil (I forget which type) for several days before fitting keys and finishing.
I know that some makers do not do this.
What are the pros and cons? What do people think about this practice?
Well, kinda depends on the oil…
I think Cillian Ó Bríain gives his chanters some kind of Danish oil treatment when they’re about nearly finished…At least with his boxwood chanters, anyway.
I remember once looking through a Scottish Smallpipe/Border pipe tutor that Gordon Mooney put together a number of years ago and I think he said something about oiling your pipes with olive oil, which struck me as a bit odd (wouldn’t it make you ravenous when you were trying to play?)…Perhaps you could sop up the excess with a bit of focaccia or something…
Some pipemakers are serious nazis about regularly oiling instruments and they may chide you a bit if you bring your instrument in for maitenance and it appears that you have not been regularly oiling it. The most common argument in favor of oiling seems to be that it fills in tiny crevaces in the wood grain and results in a smoother tone…Makes sense, I suppose, but flute players wind up with big gobs of lung vapor and god knows what else dripping all over the bores of their flutes and it doesn’t seem to adversely affect the tone all that much…
I do know of one maker that seems to be dead set against any oiling of the bore of the instrument, as he believes that prolonged treatment with most any oil will eventually wind up gunking up the bore…
Bottom line is to do whatever seems best to you, I suppose. I know a whistle player that slathers oil all over her blackwood whistle after every single time she plays it, as she is under the mistaken impression that the wood of her whistle is somehow more prone to cracking than any other wood in the world…I wouldn’t go that far, but it seems like oiling your pipes very lightly once every couple of months with a good woodwind bore oil or almond oil (preferably with some kind of antioxidant added to it) wouldn’t do any harm…
Anybody that’s actually knowledgeable about the subject care to chime in?
Many of the experts disagree on the type of oil, amount, how often and technique for application.
Since we are talking about bellows blown instruments and not mouth blown instruments, I’ll go with Brad’s instruction. Don’t oil the bore.
isityerself, if your pipes are a buffed finish without any coating like French polish (shellac) or a penetrating oil that dries with a buildup (Danish oil) than you probably don’t need to do anything more than a light periodic cleaning… once every 2 or 3 months should be sufficient.
If you don’t have any oil or don’t want to spend $10-15 for a bottle of almond oil, try this simple technique:
Take a 1 shelled walnut, put it in a small soft cloth, fold the cloth over, tap (crush) the walnut pieces with a mallet, open the cloth and shake off the walnut crumbs. Now you have enough walnut oil to clean a half set of pipes.
There are several different notions getting conflated together here, could lead to a lot of confusion.
Firstly - inside vs outside. Oiling the bore is very different from oiling the outside of an instrument. (more below)
Secondly - the type of wood matters. I seriously doubt Craig is soaking his ebony in oil, but I bet he’s soaking his boxwood. (He only uses ebony or boxwood). Same goes for the outside - oil on boxwood makes sense, whereas on ebony it is really unnecessary and possibly harmful. Some makers boil/soak boxwood in linseed oil after treating it with nitric acid, as a way of neutralizing the acid without dulling the lovely color it gives (ammonia or alkalai neutralizing agents reportedly dull the color of nitric acid stain).
Thirdly - mouth-blown vs dry-air instruments; oiling the bore of mouthblown instruments makes sense as a way of helping provide a moisture barrier and generally “conditioning” the bore. This does NOT make sense in general for uilleann/union pipes, and in fact oiling the bore can indeed lead to a builup of residue which will spoil the instrument and be next-to-impossible to remove. I would avoid it; even if the maker used oil on the inside during final finishing of the instrument, no additional oil should be needed over its lifetime (unlike the case with mouth-blown instruments).
Lastly, oiling the outside of an instrument really depends on the finish that’s used on it (if any). Best to ask your maker.
In any case the amount of oil used for “end user maintenance” of the outside of an instrument should be very small - along the lines of what Tony suggests.
As a maker I have oiled the bore of an instrument made of pearwood, with improved results, but this is not something that I would attempt or recommend with other woods (with the possible exception of boxwood, and again, the quantity used must be very small.
One last piece of advice/opinion: do not under any circumstances allow boiled linseed oil inside your bore, unless you want to make a lamp or something.
best regards
Bill
On a recent visit to Andreas Rogge’s workshop, he soaked the chanter and regulators of my plumwood set in a bath of (I think) linseed oil to great effect. The regs had been leaking despite careful repadding and binding, apparently through the wood itself, and the oil seems to have sorted the problem out. He reckoned this sort of treatment was useful for light woods like plum once every 3 to 4 years, though less so for ebony. That said, he says he has occasionally known the treatment to sort out leaky ebony.
I think this wood porosity issue is why I’ve found oiling useful for pearwood - I concluded that wood porosity was to blame for the pre-oiling problem. The oil treatment seems to lose some of its benefit over a year or so, which seems to go along with Andreas’ every “3 or 4 years” notion. But eventually buildup would be a problem…
I would not trust it for ebony - it does alter the tone and playing characteristics of a chanter, and I would not assume always for the better. The oil buildup issue would be a concern for ebony too - linseed oil is a hardening oil and a couple of applications could easily add a thousandth to the inside of the bore - as if the chanter had shrunk.
Seems to me that if ebony is acting that porous, something is/was wrong with the timber in the first place? Or perhaps leaky ebony indicates microcracks - so this would be a somewhat desperate solution to a nasty problem?
Bill
removed duplicate post
i use linseed oil on all my pipes,makes em look nice,and sound sweeeeeet!
I know Joe Kennedy ran into this problem with an applewood chanter he made. He plugged the ends and filled the bore with a sealant (French polish, I think) and noted the numerous points on the outside of the chanter where the sealant was bleeding through - like small pin holes.
Perhaps this issue of needing to oil/seal chanters is reserved for more porous woods like fruitwoods. As Billh has noted above, oiling is usually reserved for wooden instruments that are exposed regularly to the heavy moisture of the breath. This would not apply to UP chanters, especially those made of dense woods like ebony or African blackwood.
djm
Not only do I not oil my pipes, I don’t oil my wooden flutes or whistles either. My flutemaker advised me not to oil my flute, and the flutes I had before that were oiled only rarely, usually just for the first few months after they were made and then occasionally in winter if they looked particularly dry. I’ve never had a crack on a flute in 20+ years of playing. I have a few blackwood whistles that Chris Abell made for me in the 1980s, and I haven’t oiled any of them in at least 10 years; they all play as well as they did when they were made, and are in perfect shape. I do swab the moisture out of my flutes and the wooden whistles after playing them, but that’s it, no oiling.
There’s a real lack of consensus and common practice in the woodwind world for ebony, rosewood and blackwood instruments (clarinets and oboes).
Fruitwoods and boxwood do seem to benefit from oiling. Maple as used in bassoons must be oiled. The wood is soaked during the manufacturing process and the exposed internal bore (where it isn’t lined) needs treating periodically. If a bassoon dries out it leaks like a sieve through the pores.
Vegetable based oils that provide a vapor barrier but also will allow the wood to breathe are favored. Hardening oils that cause a build-up are not. Linseed oil isn’t trusted becuause it can contain petroleum derivatives.
Many NSP players oil and polish their bores (of their pipes) frequently. It’s supposed to reduce resistance and improve tone. I’m not sure I noticed a difference when I did mine.
That got me wondering about the warning on a bottle of linseed oil that reads, DANGER may spontaneously combust.
Maybe thats why the bit of wood I bored with the aid of linseed oil once, caught fire in the microwave,but that’s another story.
really relax,your stick is not going catch on fire,you guys slay me.it preserves the wood,i have applied to reeds,slips ect.also, i use renisance wax after drying its used by musems in london.
Boiled linseed oil is a very bad idea. It’s what they made paint from. It doesn’t really penetrate well then it dries on the surface making your bore narrower.
That’s right. When I said ‘lamp’ I mean table lamp, not oil lamp. I am not particularly worried about spontaneous combustion, human, chanter, or otherwise.
I find linseed oil affects the tone of reeds and reed slips in a way that I do not like (kills brightness).
regards
Bill
I think a lot of people’s perception about oiling comes down to personal opinion. If, at a formative stage of your development in playing the instrument, somebody important (say, your teacher or the pipemaker) tells you that oiling the instrument will make it sound better, then you’ll probably wind up thinking that your instrument does sound better after you oil the bore(s). I used to religiously oil the bores of my highland pipes and smallpipes each month and I always thought I could hear a clear difference in the sound because other people (people that I assumed knew better) told me that I should be able to hear a clear difference in the sound. I began to do the same thing with my flute when I started playing that and would slather the bore with oil about once a month…It took me a good long while until I finally broke through the self-denial and said to myself “hey, this thing sounds kinda cruddy the first few days after I oil it…” I haven’t oiled my flute or any of my pipes in probably a few years now and [touch wood] they all seem just fine. As I am about to take delivery of a new boxwood chanter pretty soon, I am a bit curious about whether or not I should sporadically oil it. According to the maker, it’s stayed perfectly straight without the slightest bit of warping throughout the entire boring out process and I’d like to keep it that way as much as possible…Mostly, that means keeping it in an environment where the relative humidity remains pretty stable, but I do wonder if occasionally treating both the bore and the outside of the chanter with a tiny amount of oil would be at all beneficial.
Some wood-turners will take a handful of shavings from a piece and press these hard into the wood while it is still turning on the lathe. This has the effect of burnishing the wood, which can really make the grain stand out on some woods, e.g. cocobolo. I wonder if some people have seen this sheen on their chanters and “assumed” that the chanter was oiled. Just a thought …
djm
“Brad”?
I’ve many old cracked flutes and I think the oil mania started with them because the walls/sockets can be very thin in places. Thin = more prone to cracking, waddya know. I don’t think you need worry about a chanter though, unless you’re travelling from Maui to the Sahara. My pipes new and old have done well even in thin walled spots.