what humidity and how do you keep it?

[Berti66]

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

[Steampacket]

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.

[Berti66]

where do I find a suitable hydrometer ......

berti

[jim stone]

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.

[sturob]

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

[chas]

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.

[GaryKelly]

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.

[andrewK]

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.

[jim stone]

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.

[sturob]

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

[andrewK]

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.

[andrewK]

Only marginally relevant, but I understand that conservators in museums tend to aim for 60/65 RH

[GaryKelly]

Mr Kelly amazes me, particularly as I live quite near to him.
The humidity level my meter shows rarely moves from around 60

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.

[Father Emmet]

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.

[Steampacket]

"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.