I don’t think I’ve ever seen this topic addressed here before.
So far, my flute experience has been limited to new flutes made from delrin, although I’ve been looking at some second-hand wooden flutes on eBay lately. Does it make much of a difference if the previous owner was a smoker? Do wooden flutes hold any remnants of tobacco odor? How bad can it get, if it’s noticeable at all?
I’m sure someone here must have had some experience with this. I’d really rather not get stuck with a smelly flute. I’m not a smoker and I think this would really turn me off.
Like anything from a tobacco smokey environment, they’ll have a residual pong for a while - even if it wasn’t a smoker who played them. With cleaning (nothing out of the ordinary) and being left open to the air, it will soon go off. I acquired a silver Gemeinhardt Boehm flute from a fellow chiffer earlier this year and when it arrived both it and its case smelled very strongly of tobacco smoke. I just left it out with the case open, and by the time I came to start work on overhauling it the smell was barely noticeable. Now it has been stripped, cleaned and repadded it doesn’t smell at all, nor does the plush-lined case, and I haven’t even vacuumed that out yet.
In other words, it is only a temporary problem if it is one at all - can be obnoxious at first, but won’t last, even without cleaning but with plenty of fresh air.
I occasionally get instruments in the store from heavy smokers. The tobacco residue will about knock you over. I put them under a blanket with one of those ozone-blasting air freshener machines for a half hour or so and they’re good as new. Just mae sure the air-intake part of the machine is’t covered with the blanket so fresh air can go through it.
I bought a whistle in African Blackwood and it smelled awful cigarrette smell. I just put a coffee bag in the whistle overnight, and the smell was almost gone. I repeated the process and the smell never came back.
This suggestion was given to me by Kevin Krell. Thanks, Kevin!
