I play and play and now my whistle is starting to small funny.
Does anyone have suggestions on cleaning? I searched for Cleaning but nothing seems to address cleaning the inside of the whistle.
Plus my pennywhistle has a plastic head, does that affect cleaning possibilities?
Thanks
~~TINA
Just stick it in fairy liquid when you’re doing the dishes.
How many fairies do you have to squeeze to get enough liquid to wash a whistle? 
And what does that have to do with doing the dishes?
Heh Heh, I don’t think you have to squeeze them, just get them to squeeze the dishwashing liquid into the sink, fill it with warm water and wash the whistle. Make sure you get the windway good as well. A pipe cleaner or a tissue wrapped toothpick should get the tight spots.
Make sure you dry it off well when you are done.
(deleted comment that could be perceived as rude 
but was supposed to be funny)
Hey, I can do that myself.
(deleted comment that could be perceived as rude >
You’re no fun at all!
Your whistle will sound a lot better once it is washed too!
Here are a few tips that should help:
Remove the mouthpiece if possible. If you have a Generation whistle or something like it, you can remove the top by:
Heat some water in the microwave (NOT TO BOILING) Quickly dip the head in, pull out then remove the top. If you get the temperature just right, you should be able to melt the glue. I have not tried this on a sweet tone so others will have to tell you about them.
Once you have the mouthpiece off, clean the top using an old tooth brush with dish soap in the big part. Use a pipe cleaner and maybe something fine to get into the tight spaces. DO NOT SCRATCH THE WINDWAY! You want the windway smooth.
For the finger tube, use dishsoap and an old tooth brush to scrub the inside.
DRYING: Dry with a cloth or paper towel and set standing up so that the inside can drain or just go ahead and play it. If the sound is muffled or funny in anyway, check for lint or crud inside the whistle. Sometimes pipecleaners leave fluff. Also put your finger over the airway hole and blow the water through.
MAINTENANCE: I suggest cleaning the whistle with soap and water at least every month, or sooner if needed. For everyday cleaning, you can make a cleaner for the finger tube by: Take a nut from the workshop, something nice and heavy but smaller than the smallest part of your finger tube. (A fishing weight or really heavy bead will also do.) Cut a small circle or square of felt. Maybe 1.5" Square. (You will have to experiment to find the right size for your whistle.) Now take a string, preferably not something cotton or absorbant. It should be about 1.5 times the length of your finger tube. Attach it to the middle of the felt. You can do this by sewing or by putting a small hole in the felt and threading the string through. Put a small bead or a bunch of knots on the end of the string to stop it from slipping through the felt. At the other end of the string, tie your weight.
Drop the weight into one end of the finger tube (mouthpiece should be off!!) Grab the weight and pull the felt through. If the felt moves too easily, you need a bigger piece. If it is too hard to move, make the felt smaller. This should clean excess moisture and dirt from your finger tube and keep it much cleaner.
For the mouthpiece, you can cut a pipe cleaner into 3 equal lengths. Keep one length with your whistle and when you need to you can clean the mouthpiece. It is good to find cotton pipecleaners as they clean better and don’t shed as much. Over use of the pipecleaners can cause them to shed unwanted lint into the mouthpiece. I like to bend one end of the pipcleaner over so that I am not rubbing the sharp end over my airway, but your whistle needs to be big enough for this. Pipecleaners also come in smaller sizes.
Hope this helps!
Sandy Jasper
:roll:
This is good advice. Whatever you do, DO NOT attempt to remove the head by heating the tube with a blowtorch to melt the glue.
Yeah, really, you might poke your eye out… 
Oh, come on Peter. Just funnin’ wit ya! 
I actually think that stuff looks interesting…if I use it, will my dishes magically get clean?
Tina, is your whistle brass?
If it is, there is a solution I use, the formula was obtained from another forum member, that contains vinegar and salt. Works really great!
Try a search and if you don’t come up with anything, perhaps Zub will post the instructions again.
Mike
Search term: vinegar
Author: zubivka
forum: whistle
time frame: 1 year
This brought up 3-4 posts and one contained the following:
Enjoy
what about removing the mouthpiece and using a sander for the metal ?
If some of the suggestions seem a bit complicated, you can clean the windway quite well by removing the head, soaping a bit of doubled up computer card, pushing the card backwards and forwards down the windway to remove crud, and then rinsing when you are finished. You won’t believe how much crud you’ll get from a frequently played whistle when you try this.
You can also use Conn mouth freshener, specially made for cleaning wind instruments, to give your whistle that clean minty taste that truly refreshes.
BTW, if your whistle is a Grinter with a wooden mouthpiece and windway, I think you’d better ignore all the advice given so far.
Or a Bleazey, or a Wood Syn or any wooden instrument.
Point taken, but Tinanana did say it was a plastic head.
You will notice that on the lefthand bottle the fairy is facing to the left, but on the other ones they are facing to the right.
This is a highly significant but mysterious fact.
The bottle on the right is labelled “bigger bottle”, so the bottle on the left should be labelled “biggest bottle”, but it isn’t.
Also, why do the fairies all wear nappies? (daipers)
Yowsers, it’s slow this afternoon in the office…
The yellow and blue fairies are marching off stage left (from their vantage point) to demand a larger bottle in which they can mix their contents and make green. They are tired of the larger fairy, on the current green bottle, pushing them around. The diapers/nappies are obvious to anyone who has actually attempted to work with young fairies. They are used to a more “natural” environment, and are extremely difficult to housebreak.
Pretty slow where you are too, eh, Emm?
Although I do understand the reasoning, I don’t think that the vertically challenged fairies should change to green…the green in the larger bottle is just so unattractive.