Now about all this oil stuff . . . Olive oil, neatsfoot oil, almond oil. All these vegetable or animal sourced substances are pretty variable depending on how and where they have been grown and how they have been processed. They will for example have varying levels of acidity and capability of being oxidised or in the case of neatsfoot oil, oxodised. They may also behave differently according to what has previously been used on the instrument. That's why I prefer to use liquid paraffin which does the job and allows me to forget about it.
The oiling question pops up regularly if not frequently and usually at a time when little else is going on. An interesting subject but not nearly as interesting as actually playing. A Compleat history of Oyling (or indeed any other regular topic) may be found by doing a search on the list archive, a useful and not well-known resource: http://www.mail-archive.com/nsp%40cs.dartmouth.edu/ Francis To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
