ok I am new to the wooden stick, till now have been playing a dixon 3 piece poly but now hosting two wooden flutes (grinter and McGee if you want to know) and I want to give them the best care I can.
Humidity in my living is between 33 and 40 (in the netherlands) and I understand that is too low?
What humidity should I keep the flutes in and how do I keep it humid enough?
Berti
30 to 40 is too low. I keep my 2 flutes in their case resp. roll up inside a transparent plastic bag together with a damp sponge and a hydrometer, when they are not being played. The humidity in my flat in the Swedish winter is around 40 which is too dry. Inside the bag the hydrometer reads around 100, which is over the top I know, but the flutes are inside a case and roll up so it seems to work out, and I haven’t had any problems with mold or swelling. I play one or the other of the flutes every day so they get out of the bag and used. I have two extra headjoints, a Wilkes & Williams that reside in a plastic box with a hydro that reads 65-70.
where do I find a suitable hydrometer …
berti
60 is good; 50 is minimal.
An option is to humidify your whole
house, or the room where the flutes
reside, with a humidifier.
These are reasonably cheap and
it’s much healthier for people too.
I manage 50 during the winter
without trouble to the flutes.
The makers want 60, at least
the ones I talk to.
You should be able to find a good hygrometer at a hardware-type store, or a Home Depot (do they have them in the Netherlands yet?). Something which tells you temperature and humidity would probably cost around €20-€25.
OR, they sell little hygrometers for humidors at cigar shops. Oh, a cigar shop might even have a big hygrometer (like for a room) for a walk-in humidor.
I think keeping the humidity there is more of a challenge. When I lived in Toronto, which is REALLY cold, the RH indoors would drop into the 20-30% range in the winter. I got (and used) a room humidifier, but then had condensation problems on the windows . . .
Stuart
Different makers recommend different levels. Grinter recommends 40-60; Copley somewhat higher than that. I had been keeping my flutes and whistles in a couple of Tupperware/Rubbermaid containers with cigar humidifiers. That would maintain a stable 60% or so. Now I keep those that I don’t play much there, but keep the ones I do play out in the open in a room with a humidifier. The room is usually about 50%.
If the cigar craze has hit there, they sell humidifier/hygrometer combos.
One of these years, I’m going to make a case for my flutes and whistles that will also be a controlled atmosphere.
I’m having a great deal of trouble getting my head around the idea that I need to invest in some sort of artificial climate-control lest my wooden flutes all spontaneously explode or something.
Is indoor humidity really such a serious issue for a wooden flute that’s played daily (or even once or twice a week)? I could understand collectors and museums storing their immensely valuable unplayed antiques in a controlled environment… But I can’t understand comments like “30 to 40 is too low.” Particularly when the humidity in my living-room last night was 25 and none of my flutes blew up.
Too low for what? The lower the RH, the more moisture can be absorbed by the air around us. Okay, a flute will dry out faster in dry air than in humid air, but jeeze, how wet is your wooden flute, especially if you oil it? I like low humidity, it means less condensation clogging the bore and more playing-time between blowing the thing out.
I’ll confess I just bought a digital hygrometer off eBay 'cos there are days when my flutes sound like they’ve been stuffed with cotton wool and drip like leaky taps, they become unplayable at such times. I reckon it’s a humidity thing, and want to investigate (to see if I can find a link between the unplayable days and RH, then I can avoid the bother of trying to play on the ‘wrong’ days).
But I’ve a fairly strong feeling in my water that our predecessors didn’t obsess about RH, and the fact that there are still so many wonderful antique wooden flutes in use today would seem to indicate they were right not to fret too much about it.
Mr Kelly amazes me, particularly as I live quite near to him.
The humidity level my meter shows rarely moves from around 60
I shall now check my lounge walls to see if there is water running down them.If there is I shall open a new bottle of whisky. It won’t do the walls much good but …
It is all very well to be cavalier about these things till one rises to find that a Rudall & Rose headjoint ( perhaps 170 years old ) which was perfect when one went to bed has split !
Of course there has been a lot of talk of headjoints cracking on being sent to areas dryer than the flute is used to, or in dry airline holds, usually in the course of transatlantic delivery.
I still suspect the value of sending the flute sealed in a plastic bag with a note of the humidity at the sending end so the recipient can make appropriate gradual adjustment.
There are, Bertie, plastic containers sold in
stores ike Walmart in the USA, very cheap,
spare drawers that fit under your bed,
which are perfect for humidifying flutes.
In go the flutes disassembled with
a damp sponge and a hydrometer.
Or just a damp sponge.
In my experience putting the flutes in
such an environment IN their cases
is asking for mildew.
Yes, but how many of those antiques are crack-free? (Except for Andrew’s, of course!)
I don’t know that we have a good answer as to what might be the best RH for flutes. I personally think it’s ridiculous for a maker to recommend a relative humidity at which his flutes should be kept. Yeesh. Season the timber BEFORE you make the flute.
I mean, seriously.
Stuart
I nearly wrecked a few flutes by leaving them in Tupperwear thinking they wouldn’t dry out in the summer. I forgot the mould !
The idea of a receptacle under the bed is a good one, but in England the things we traditionally keep are usually only big enough for piccolos.
Only marginally relevant, but I understand that conservators in museums tend to aim for 60/65 RH
I was surprised too, since we usually get the fall-out from Wales here in Swindon, and that invariably means rain. But the meter seems reliable; when it arrived it soon matched the 20% shown by the environmental gauges here in the office (sealed glass building, recycled aircon, nasty heating and air-scrubbers).
I can easily understand cracking being caused by large temperature variations, and that’s certainly possible in winter overnight when the heating shuts down and ambient temperature drops from 20 deg.C down to very parky in no time at all.
But I can’t see that variations in humidity can have such a drastic effect on a flute that’s played regularly. The timbers used in making flutes are generally very dense, and that plus oiling (and swabbing out after playing) should mean that the rate of absorption of moisture (and subsequent drying out) is really very low. The maker of my Bb goes so far as to advise against oiling, saying that the blackwood from which it’s made is so dense and the material so naturally resinous that it needs no such protection.
Having said all that I’ll probably become a little more paranoid when my new Hamilton finally arrives in the summer, but mostly about dropping it, not the weather.
Blackwood definitely swells/shrinks with humidity. My house in winter is about 30-35 % RH. Two weeks after my Hamilton arrived the rings became loose, and those on the footjoint fell off altogether. The endcap became very loose as well. I thought about the handkercheif fix for the rings, but decided to address the cause and not the symptom. I bought a humidifier and am able to bring the RH up to about 45%. The rings are now fitted firmly.
When I accidentally left the case open one night and the water ran out in the humidifier, the RH dropped to about 30% again, and the rings loosened right up.
I am very worried that swelling/shrinking will crack the flute, but it’s OK so far. I play it for about half an hour in the morning and 20 mins at night. Maybe I should go the Tupperware route.
“The idea of a receptacle under the bed is a good one, but in England the things we traditionally keep are usually only big enough for piccolos.” Andrew. 
Hmm … a guzunder with a lid perhaps 
Anyway Gary I don’t think one needs to get obssesive about this humidity business. Myself I don’t get more high tech regarding “the controlled environment” than using a transparant plastic bag from the local fruit & grocery shop, big enough to get me flute case in, and a piece of Wettex sponge used for wiping the sink. It gets very dry here in Sweden but this works for me and doesn’t take up any room, and I just shove the flute case inside the plastic bag into me back pack when I go out. The hygrometer was cheap 4 quid, probably not accurate enough to use in a museum setting, but good enough to show when the humidity
changes.
I have a Martin Doyle flute brought in Oct. 1996 and one cold dry Swedish morning in Feb. 1998, I awoke to find a 1 mm wide crack running the length of the headjoint through the embouchure hole and including the barrel. I was surprised as My Dave Williams flute has lived in Sweden since 1982 without a crack, albeit rarely played, as the pipes took all my time. I wasn’t deep into flutes back then so I wasn’t that bothered, just put the Doyle away in a cupboard and forgot about it.
I don’t know that we have a good answer as to what might be the best RH for flutes. I personally think it’s ridiculous for a maker to recommend a relative humidity at which his flutes should be kept. Yeesh. Season the timber BEFORE you make the flute.
I mean, seriously.
I don’t think it is that easy to “just season the wood BEFORE you make the flute”. The wood is a living breathing thing, or was, anyway. Unless the maker seals the wood with something like epoxy or varnish (yuck!) the wood is going to breath, take in moisture and dry out again. Oiling the flute helps curtail the problem but the moisture will still enter/leave the flute. The main reason to humidify the whole flute is to avoid “hoop stress”. This is caused when you play the flute and the inside wall of the flute becomes moist and expands the wood. If the outside of the flute is dry and contracted, then an inside pressure is produced that will continue until the pressure meets the threshold of the woods density, then BAM! the outside cracks. I had this happen with a old boxwood headjoint, sounded like a gun going off!
The reason the rings fall off at low humidity, is that the rings were put on at high humidity. I want to get a dehumidifier box to shrink the wood as much as possible before fitting the rings. Terry Mcgee has a good system for this, he describes on his website.
Jon
Perhaps you have a different definition of “Season the timber” than makers do Stuart :roll: 
One can “season the wood” all one likes, it will eventually stabilize at the humidity to which it is exposed at length, however, unless one hermetically seals the wood, it’s going to readjust it’s internal moisture content (by and large) to what ever humidity it lives in once it gets to the new owner. That’s just a fact.
Seasoning helps, and I’m all for it, however season the wood all ya want at 70% RH, then ship the instrument to someone who lives in Arizona that refuses to use humidification, or at least play for an hour every day, and that instrument is more likely than not to crack. Period.
Loren
That’s not exactly what I mean, and you both should know it.
I remember reading, years ago, about how (a) certain maker(s) said that a flute WOULD take several years from ordering to finished product. The main reason for this is that, while the stock timber had been sitting around for years, it needs to sit at various stages of reaming and turning to adjust to its new shape. That made sense to me; perhaps it’s crazy, but it just seems to make sense.
Now, however, as the instrument/genre gain(s) popularity, and economic pressures (perhaps) become more real, people absolutely will not, with very few exceptions, wait years for an instrument. Or even a year. Is that right? I don’t know. It’s also how it is.
There are VERY few makers from whom we see few uncracked flutes, and I can’t think that all of it is the fact that people living in a certain area tend to buy instruments from certain makers, and therefore large numbers of flutes are making the same climatic changes.
I guess there seem to be a couple of factors that, in my own insignificant opinion, have the greatest effect on whether or not an instrument cracks. The first, and the foremost, has got to be the way the flute was made. I once owned a flute which moved so much after it was made that it became out of tune with itself. This was a flute made near a coast, with a high RH, and sent to my own climate, which is also very humid (90% of days above 70% RH). It still moved. The wood wasn’t old enough, I suppose, or it hadn’t been allowed to sit at one phase for long enough. I hesitate to say the wood was green, but how else might we exlain it?
The second, perhaps less important, seems to be the first year or two of the flute’s life. I really really baby flutes in their first year or two. Lots of oil, careful play, swabbing out, blah blah. Anecdotally, it seems like a lot of cracks happen in the early weeks-months of a flute’s life.
ALSO, don’t forget that bellows-blown instruments also crack. Why? Can’t be because of huge humidity swings, since you never put breath through them. Wood’s just not that delicate; I think that sometimes, a piece of timber is going to crack. It just is.
So, I guess, the problem is manifold. I didn’t mean to get any maker’s ire up at the implication that it’s his fault that a flute cracks. But even years ago, when I was talking to an old pipemaker in Scotland (who made GHBs), he said you had to let the wood sit at various stages for YEARS, and that there wasn’t a good way to rush it without risking cracks. I’ve heard flutemakers say the same thing.
I can understand the impetus: the consumer is impatient, and there are enough (good) players (meaning makers) that folks wanting flutes use wait lists as an important factor in determining from whom to order a flute. Heck, I’ve been waiting nine-ish years for a keyed flute from Pat Olwell . . . jeez, I hope he seasoned the timber.
I guess I should shut up since I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Stuart
Exactly what I’ve been trying to get across, even as regards antiques. I mean hello, where were our precious R&Rs and R&Cs and R&Whoevers made? England! What’s the humidity there? Much more than Arizona! How old are those flutes and thus how long have some of them been seasoning in England at that humidity? All together now: A long, loooooong time!
Anyway. Since I’ve been keeping my flutes at 70% as much as possible, no rings have fallen off, nothing’s cracked, tenons & tuning cork stay tighter, keys and slides, etc. are leaking less, and most important, THE FLUTES JUST PLAY BETTER RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX, and they do it CONSISTENTLY. In 2 of the 3 cases they were flutes made in IRELAND (=HUMID) for people in Ireland (=HUMID), and they are far more affected by my dry winter air than my McGee, which was made in CANBERRA (= DRY) for someone here in CALIFORNIA (= DRY) … leading me to think Terry’s onto something as far as seasoning different woods for different homes.
Yes, eventually flutes get more solid and probably less sensitive. (So does petrified wood) But alas, unless there’s some HUGE medical advance I ain’t gonna be alive in 100 years to enjoy that with mine. And just because a flute is “made” doesn’t mean it’s finished seasoning, no matter how long you let the wood sit before. So for now, I’ll humidify. For about $20, it’s a lot cheaper emotionally and financially than the alternative.
(Also: if flutes never had a cracking problem, why did they invent things like ebonite? And why did metal get so hugely popular?)
Berti, here’s a cheap hygrometer and humidification option: www.humidistat.com So far I’ve been really happy with them, although I’ve heard it’s good to watch to make sure they don’t leak after a lot of taking off/putting back on of the caps.
Sorry. It’s been a long week, and I’m cranky. But I think this is really important. (And yes, I have cracked not one, but two flutes over the 10 years it took me to finally arrive at this point, and no, I don’t want to do it anymore.)
xo,
cat.
Heh Heh, I don’t think the flute world will be improved by you shutting up, Sturob. Indeed, I believe we makers have yet a lot to learn about wood (and probably everything else!) in the context of flutemaking. And we need to be reminded from time to time of the practical need to know. Players need to keep needling!
Coincidentally, I’ve just embarked on yet another round of experiments to peel back yet another layer of the onion. (Even after nearly 30 years making I believe there’s more to know.) I’ve bought new test equipment so I can now measure humidity within 2% and weight to 0.1gm and what I’m finding is most interesting. For example, make a flute from blackwood that’s been sitting around turned round and pilot bored in Canberra’s average 45-50% humidity for some years , then bring it down to 20%. Within three or four days, it has lost 2.5% of its weight - that’s 6gms - 6mL - of water. That’s quite a bit - over a level teaspoonful. And it’s shrunk - a head that started at 27mm diameter loses about 0.2mm on one axis and 0.4mm on the other, faster at the ends than at the middle. And I remind you, that’s starting with wood that by most accounts would be “well seasoned” “in a dry climate”.
So a flute made from wood “seasoned” in a moist climate is going to shrink even more when subjected to months of winter dryness in centrally heated homes. Rings will come loose because the wood has shrunk away from inside them. Lined heads and barrels will crack because the liners were tight to start with (or they would turn) and the wood is now 0.4mm or more tighter, and ovoid as well, no doubt creating specific pressure points.
Possibly keys will jam, and cracks may be induced at other points where natural movement of the timber is prevented. I’ve just received a nice old Goulding, D’Almaine, Potter & Co flute (circa 1820) for repair. Head surprisingly intact (ie ticking time-bomb), massive crack through barrel, but also a big crack through the LH section right through the Bb key slot and a smaller one through the G# slot. The flute has metal liners in the key slots - very pretty, but quite deadly. When the wood tries to shrink, the metal U channels prevent it. Normally the small amount of clearance around the key is enough to permit this natural movement. And jamming of the keys would alert us to a problem.
So, makers need to learn as much as possible about the movement of wood, and where possible avoid building in time bombs. They should consider the full range of humidities their flutes are likely to encounter - no point in making a flute for New Mexico if the owner then moves or resells the flute to Florida. And they should advise owners what limits on humidity should be observed.
Owners of old flutes in dry situations should definitely consider humidification - I’d suggest aiming to keep it within the range 50% to 65%, but that is just a suggestion as we cannot know under what conditions the flute was made. Players with new flutes with lined heads and barrels should ask the maker for recommended range. And remember, playing a flute with a lined head and barrel will not help humidify it - the moisture remains inside the liner.
Humidification doesn’t have to be exotic - the plastic storage box, wet sponge and a cheap hygrometer will be fine. Check your hygrometer against the weather report to make sure it isn’t just an ornamental one!
And it’s no insurance that your flute hasn’t cracked yet. It seems that the English makers were not aware of their problem until they had to supply flutes for the Indian Raj. Some time later, central heating was invented and the problem came home with a bang. I have reason to believe that there is also an accumulative issue - the wood shrinks but then doesn’t quite expand to the original level. Next time it shrinks a bit further again, but then doesn’t expand to the previous level, etc. So it might be 5 - 10 -15 years before your flute cracks. Is that a long enough life? Not for me. It’s this cumulative phenomen I’m just embarking on investigating using the higher-precision test equipment and artificial aging techniques.
I still argue that the old fully lined head and barrel idea has long passed its use-by date. My “New Improved Tuning Slide” (partial slides with cork buffers at the wood-metal interface) is one solution, and is available to other makers at no cost. (http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/fluteslide.html) There are no doubt others - we need to discover and develop them. Players can help promote development by demanding flutes with anti-cracking strategies.
Terry