Whistle Crisis Narrowly Averted

It's been getting hella cold here in the 'Robe, which means I've been spending more time indoors practicing. This occassions no small amount of woe on the part of my neighbors, who start slamming about in their apartment whenever I begin. (To be fair, they slam about in their apartment pretty much constantly, so I could very well be projecting slamming motivation where there is none.)

Two days ago, I found myself in circumstances occassioning no small amount of woe when I discovered that my second favorite pennywhistle and main practice instrument had somehow been fused into a single unplayable hunk of brass tubing.

Woe. Seriously. That 6.9 earthquake off the coast of Japan this morning? Was me thrashing about in agonies over the fact that my beloved instrument was no longer functional.

I have spent most of my free time in the last two days futilely pulling at and pleading with it to come unfused. During this period I have put massive blisters on my fingers, upended the instrument in a bottle of extra pure virgin olive oil, and coated it with several tablespoons of ketsup in an effort to correct the problem.

I finally managed to separate the joints this afternoon. I am now the rejoicing owner of one very oily semi-playable Hoover Narrow Bore D that stinks unbearably of tomatoes.

There seems to be a large corrosive buildup on the headjoint and upper body, which is odd, because this has never occurred before in the half a decade I've owned the whistle. The ketsup has removed about half of the corrosion from the headjoint, but I have no idea how to get the rest (or the oil or the ketsup) out of the body.

I am now off to see what wisdom the denizens of the intranets whistling fandom have to impart to those in my present circumstances.

That will be all.