What to Oil?

[dcopley]

I'm surprised to see so much discussion on the use of linseed oil. If the intention is to protect a flute from moisture exchange (and what else could it be for?), then linseed oil is pretty much useless, according to woodworker Bob Flexner.

I agree that linseed oil is pretty much useless in preventing moisture exchange. So is just about every other commonly used finish. As other people pointed out on this thread, you would need an impervious coating to seriously retard the transmission of water vapor, and I don't think many people would want to treat their flute with 3 or 4 coats of epoxy or paint.

The beneficial effect of linseed oil and the other penetrating coatings is to improve the dimensional stability of the wood, under conditions of varying moisture content. A piece of dry wood will swell and shrink as it is exposed to high and low humidity levels. The same wood which has been soaked with linseed oil will swell and shrink to a much lesser extent in response to the same humidity changes. I have run my own (non peer-reviewed!) experiments on this, and found that the effect of the oil is quite dramatic. So the oil does not work to keep the moisture in or out of the wood, but it seems to limit the damage done by the inevitable changes in moisture content.

Dave Copley
Loveland, Ohio

[Loren]

Loren,

Your last statement misrepresents my boxwood flutes and is in error. And might also scare away some of my potential flute clients, which disturbs me. Its like spreading rumors that my flutes will cause some sort of disease, like Republicanism. You might want to edit your post so this doesn't get archived. These are the facts:

I haven't used Thai boxwood in decades! These days I use only Turkish and French Boxwood. All Buxus sempivirens. Where did you get the idea I was using Thai boxwood? It clearly says European Boxwood on my website.

What Thai boxwood I ever used was just a few logs that came from Doug Steinke's stash after he passed away from AIDS in the early 80s. Was nice well cured stuff - I only made about 10 flutes from it cause that was all that I could afford at the time and others snatched it all up. I never had any trouble with it. Neither did he. The last Thai boxwood flute I made was sometime around 1984 and that was the last of it.

Casey, I was not stating that your current flutes are made from Thai Boxwood, I was referring to this comment you made in another thread two months ago.
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php ... light=thai

Thai Boxwood is also very nice and I have a few logs of that. Its actually a little harder. Doug Steinke made all of his baroque oboes from that wood until he passed away and his wood pile got resold and I got some. Not a true boxwood but it may as well be.

Loren

[Cork]

@Casey Burns:

Thank you!

Just today I got my new Casey Burns, blackwood flute, a large holed standard, with no options, and yes, it came well oiled, thank you!

Much more than that, and listen to this, everybody, please, I took the sections out of the soft case, then put them all together, then closed all of the holes, going for a solid bottom D, and WOW! My new flute immediately produced a strong bottom D, NAILED it, with my sincere thanks to Casey Burns!!! Oh, yeah, it also played very well throughout, for the few moments that I tried it, but maybe that has little to do with the oiling that this thread could be all about, eh?

[Loren]

Oy, just lost an entire post on the oil issue, oh well.

At any rate, once again I tried to give a simple answer (to the oil question) but I should have known better. I do, of course, agree with Dave C. with regards to why oiling with standard oils can be valuable. I also agree that oils typically aren't vapor barriers, since the science there seems clear.

Oils with drying agents or oils that polymerize quickly tend to resist displacement better and thus seem to function as Dave mentions for longer, which is why I suggested linseed over the usual almond oil recommendation.

Adding additional things like varnish to an oil, can provide a certain amount of vapor barrier. We did this on some instruments at vH.

Finally, Dave makes the valid point that most would not bother waterproofing a bore, but he also realizes that some makers have. My former employer being one of them, and I believe Seth Gallagher does, or did, as well.

Oiling, how on earth could I let myself get into this topic again?


Loren

[Loren]

There's no such thing, I think, as a completely waterproof permanent barrier......

Oh but there is indeed, and it isn't a varnish.

I just wouldn't have the heart to varnish the inside of a flute...

Why not? Something wrong with improving a flute's ability to maintain it's dimensional stability? You got something against improving the acoustical reflection efficiency of a flute's bore?


Loren

[sbfluter]

I'm an owner of 2 Casey Burns flutes, including a gorgeous boxwood one (that I miss terribly), and I use this:



I put it on the inside and on the outside. I don't know if the outside specifically requires it, but the little piece of rag I use is usually still oily after doing the inside, so why the heck not oil the outside too?

Also, I keep my little tiny 3 inch by 1 inch piece of rag in a plastic baggie so that I can reuse any oil still contained in it. This helps stave off the expense of the bore oil. That bottle cost me about $8. I haven't used it all up yet, however, despite owning 2 flutes now, one for almost a year and one for a quarter of a year. And because Casey says he'll lecture people who don't oil their flutes, I try to do it frequently. Doesn't seem worth the hassle to look for an alternative that might not have good results when a perfectly good product exists that is known to work.

This advice is given by a beginner whose clips demonstrate a lack of good embouchure and an underwhelming proficiency in flute playing. Take the advice with the appropriate-sized grain of salt.

[niallt]

I have a delrin flute and was advised by the maker to oil it - this surprised me somewhat because I thought that oiling was only required with wooden flutes. He advised me to use either almond oil or paraffin wax. I would add that his advice was given to me, not to protect the flute, but to improve the sound.

Maybe it was a placebo effect, but I have to admit that it did sound better (to me) when I oiled it with almond oil.

Any other owners of delrin flutes with similar experience?

[Ronbo]

It just gets stranger and stranger out here. I have been told by various makers, players, and kibitzers to:
1. Use bore oil and a) oil the inside and outside of the flute, or b) just oil the inside of the flute.

2. DONT use bore oil because it contains too many volatile hydrocarbons and can wreck a flute over time.

3. Use anything from Jojoba oil to walnut oil to olive oil to almond oil, and oil either the inside, the outside, or both sides.

4. Don't waste your time oiling the flute, just keep it humidified and play it regularly.

5. Use linseed oil, don't use linseed oil, wipe on, wipe off, "If you look at linseed oil you will invalidate your warranty", and so forth.

6. Use a drying oil, use a non-drying oil, use Castrol, etc. and then justified by every reason on earth.

7. Oil daily, oil weekly, oil monthly, make sure the bore is dry, make sure the bore has an oil film in it.

I have met flute players who treat theirs like gold, others who say "what is oil?" and others who do it like spring cleaning, haphazardly now and then. With all this variation, I only know of one flute player who has personally experienced a crack, and that was from dropping it.

Do we have any definitive answers to this question of "to oil or not to oil" or is everybody basing their answers on suggestions that they have picked up over time? I would expect that the makers would have the best information out there, but their suggestions are all over the map, just like everybody else's. Is there any hope for a definitive answer to this question?

[Ben Shaffer]

I think Ronbo summed it up nicely. People are doing every damn thing under the sun to maintain their Flutes, the results are they all seem at least playable.
Ronbo's observation reminded me of some lyrics from a Bob Dylan song....

......." to each his own it's all unknown if Dogs run free"

well I can see here from the window my Beagle Brownie is running around like a maniac in the backyard Barking....let me quick run into the kitchen and get some Prune juice to oil down my Flute before he comes in!

.
BenS