Is it safe to use a little rubbing alcohol to clean out the inside of my flute? if i use a little on the outside to clean of tarnish, is that safe?

Yes. There is a whole thread about cleaning your flute that you may want to look at.

I should have been more clear, sorry. YES, it is okay to use it.

So its safe to use it get to the tarnish of the outside too?

I mean, its safe to use on the outside if theres tarnish on the outside?

Yes, it is safe to use it.
And it is quite good for removing general grime. However it does not in itself remove tarnish, even though the rubbing involved may remove a little, depending on the tarnish.... some is quite superficial, and some is deep in the metal.

To remove tarnish you need something that is chemically formulated for this purpose, often including a VERY mild abrasive.

However you should not get too preoccupied about removing tarnish. Silver tarnishes, and the speed at which this happens depends hugely on the environment, such as just what is in the atmosphere, what comes off your fingers, what is in the moisture that from your lungs that condenses on the inside of your flute, and what is in any saliva that gets on the instrument.

There are some parts of the world where the gases from geothermal activity will tarnish an entire flute pitch black within a year or two. You have a black flute; you live with it!

The idea of wiping your flute is to PREVENT tarnish, by removing these things. Most of the time a 100% cotton cloth is ideal - no alcohol required.

Remove tarnish if you wish, from the ACCESSIBLE parts, OCCASIONALLY. But keep the tarnish removers away from the pivots in the mechanism, where they can do a lot of damage. It is best to leave these areas for a technician at a time when all the pads are being replaced, i.e. a complete overhaul.

The best tarnish remover to use on a flute is an appropriate cloth. For good information take a look at this site, but remember that a flute is NOT just a piece of jewellery. It is also high precision mechanism with other metals involved.

http://www.silversmithing.com/care.htm

Great link! Thanks Arak.

You are most welcome.

I meant to to post this in this thread, but some how it ended up in another place? So.. here is is again.

I wanted to add that I use Hagerty silver dry wipes to clean up flutes and keep tarnish away. They work wonderfully.

They don`t leave powder behind that can get into your mechanism like some of the treated polishing cloths for flute. They also have r-22 in them to help prevent tarnish.

When I overhauled one of my flutes and had it disassembled, I used some of the Hagerty`s with the r-22 in it and I have not had tarnish on that flute in two and a half years!
I love this stuff!

Here is a link to it.
http://www.silverqueen.com/SUPPLIES/supplies.asp

It is in the second column 6th one down on the page.

KC knows some good tricks!

$9.95....

Wipe, clean and protect silver. These dry wipes remove tarnish instantly and protect from future tarnish. A new way to quickly wipe away tarnish from sterling silver and silver-plated pieces. Each disposable 5"x10" wipe is treated with Hagerty`s famous R-22 tarnish preventative. When finished cleaning, simply throw the wipe away. Container of 12 disposable dry wipes.

That`s an expensive way to polish. It must be impressive for you to keep using them.

Well, I don`t use them all the time. One sheet will do a whole flute.
They are worth every penny and last a long time.

On my flutes lip plate the finish wore off and theres black tarnish on it. Would rubbing alcohol get rid of the tarnish?

Rubbing Alcohol won`t help much, but you can get a pea size amount white toothpaste paste and dissolve it in a shot glass. Take a soft cotton cloth and wet it and scrub the area. The tarnish should come off after a while.

If it`s really haevily tanished pure toothpaste paste will knock it out in seconds. Though some people caution that pure toothpaste can cause small scratches that aren`t visible to the naked eye.

I say if you allowed it to so badly tarnished in the first place... any resulting scratching from toothpaste is the least of your troubles.

To get tarnish off silver, you ideally should use silver polish. There is plenty of good advice in the silver-smithing link provided above.

Some silver polishes, such as Haggerty`s, and Goddards silver cloth are quite mild and only gently abrasive, while others such as Silvo Silver Polish Wadding, are quite a lot more aggressive.

You choose the silver polish for the situation.

Most metal polishes contain abrasive, even the ones that SAY they don`t. It is just that the abrasive is milder. For polishing precious metals it is really important that the abrasive particles are all less than a given size. This is a lot more expensive to achieve than to have say 1% of them larger. It is the large ones that do all the damage to the surface, and they are common in sub-standard, cheaper polishes.

I would fully expect these larger particles to be common in toothpaste. I would also expect the abrasive chosen to be considerably harder than abrasives used on silver, because the tooth enamel surface is a lot harder than silver.

BTW, if you are getting black tarnish on your embouchure plate, it is almost certainly coming from an interaction with some sulfur-containing contaminant on your chin.

Examples could be acne preparations, and some other cosmetics. It could also be in your perspiration. Onion, egg, garlic, and some dehydrated fruit have significant sulfur content. There is also sulfur in wool, and in products of combustion, e.g. from a gas stove or un-flued gas heater, cigarettes, vehicle exhaust etc.