Whilst cleaning out my Mum's attic, we came across my old treble recorder. Haven't seen it since I was 12
It plays nicely and has a nice tone. However , it smells musty, like a church crypt. What can I do about that. It wasn't wet, and has nothing growing in it.
Bev

Wooden or plastic, Bev?

Have you ever taken out the block yourself?

If you like to try, use a wooden cleaing stick and "hammer" it out from inside the bore. VERY carefully!

Then buy some very good linseed oil best from the apothecary and make your recorder a comfy bath for a day in it (ONLY the recorder. NOT the block!). If you care to heat it to a temparature of 42 Celsius (but not more), recorder and oil wouldnt mind at all. You could do it with a oil bath in the hot water bath sort of thing, like making cake dough with hard butter. Let it lie there for a day. Then take out the recorder and clean VERY sorroughly the bore and especially the windway, where the block will be replaced again, with a Bounty kitchen paper. Then, you set the block in it again. Use a wood hammer or a plastic hammer with a kitchen towel or something inbetween for not hurting the block. When the block fits, break-in the recorder as you would a new one.

Edit: You can use ethyl alcohol up front, to clean it from the outside and from the inside. Again, be careful not to touch the block with it.

Wooden Katyjay.

Mustiness could be fungus - or gubbins on the block, yes. If it is a good instrument, then I'd be inclined to send it away for a clean - I'm just reading Tim Cranmore's booklet on obedience training for recorders, and there is a such a lot of maintenance advice in there that I'm feeling quite overwhelmed by it all - he gives guidance on scraping this bit and chipping at gunk on that bit, wire wool on a drill bit to make the bore smooth - seriously scary stuff in other words, and then qualifies all he says by suggesting that those wishing to learn these skills should go and get cheap nasty instruments off eBay and practise on wrecks first . So, forget oil baths and block tapping, if it's nice, and give it to the technicians at the EMS to clean - they do a good job - and if you ever have a yen to de-must recorders on a larger scale, get the book and some cheap nasties to wreck with impunity .

Thank you everyone. I don't know if it's a good one. I doubt it cost much as Mum and Dad didn't earn much. The make is Venus, and it's a very light blonde wood which has a clear varnish on.
I can't actually see anything growing. It's breathing in the dining room and I hope it will get less smelly.
One day when I am all grown up, and have Grade 8 flute, I intend to learn recorder properly.
Bev

You'd not necessarily see anything growing if it were fungus, because moulds/ mildew only make spots on the surface of the wood. I did have one more thought - you could, with care, shove a clean feather down the windway, so from the tip of the instrument down the hole you breath into, towards the little window on the front of the head. If you do that, be careful not to take it as far as the very delicate blade of wood which vibrates and makes the sound, but it may well help. A stiff but smallish flight primary feather would be good for that - the blunter secondaries would be a bit too floppy to manage much cleaning.
Tim Cranmore warns about block removal: there are about three different block profiles, and some are harder to remove, others to get back in again after....and he's had them stick halfway too, risking splitting the recorder head whether attempting to shove it out altogether or shove it back again to where it lives. So again, a technique best practised on an instrument which doesn't matter.
Sounds as if your treble will be made of maple - it's probably one of the easier woods to work, and some experience problems with warping and distortion of maple, but my first proper recorder was made of it and still works perfectly well after twenty three years .

This isn't a recommendation, but...

I've been told book conservators kill mould and mildew in books by microwaving them.

Microwaving is actually one technique Tim Cranmore mentions too, in order to straighten a middle joint.

He also points out it may cause damage .

If this is not a particularly expensive recorder, I would recommend wiping it with vinegar, both inside and outside, and then (say, after 15 minutes) washing vinegar away with water (but don't hold the recorder under water for longer than several seconds). Then dry thouroughly. You might need to repeat this in a week's time if you are not satisfied. After that, the instrument will smell of vinegar for some time, but it will evaporate eventually.

I'd not advise doing that with a wooden instrument, AlexV... water and presumably the vinegar too will both tend to raise the grain of the wood, which might make the recorder look all fluffy but would be terrible for the sound.
The author of my book talks about alcohol and cotton buds, but then points out that they are often not enough to shift caked gunk. The block and windway can be wiped with a damp cloth (they're used to a lot of humidity anyway), but dipping an instrument like that risks doing serious damage.

Oh, and he says elsewhere that other things he's done with recorders over time do risk them catching fire, but that they look rather attractive with smoke curling out of all of the holes .

At Greenwich I did hear someone refering to that book as being great for recorder sales.......to replace the instruments you'd ruined by just trying things out!

I must admit, I read Tim Cranmore's website extracts from the book, and the phrase "don't do this at home" kept creeping through my mind....