Chipped Tenjin

Building/Repair
#1

Hello,

Today while I was practicing, I heard a rattling within the cover for the end of my tenjin. To my horror, a small piece of it had chipped off which is truly baffling to me as I keep my shamisen in only two places; either my lap when I practice or inside my hard case. I have never dropped or banged it against anything. So this leads me to wonder, has anyone had something similar happen to them? I am wondering if the humidity of Hawaii stressed out the kouki and caused an existing crack in the wood to finally give way. This was a used shamisen so I don’t know what kind of conditions it went through beforehand.

#2

If the break is clean enough, maybe try reattaching it with wood glue? If you’re careful, it can look pretty seamless. I don’t think it’s very uncommon for tenjins to chip, unfortunately. It probably wasn’t anything you did to the instrument.

#3

Yikes! I’m afraid that can happen with such a hard hardwood.

When I came back from Japan this year, I left a cool 70 degree Osaka and arrived in a 100 degree Santa Cruz (yay global warming!). The next day, I pulled out my new shamisen to practice and found there were six cracks along the sao and tenjin! I immediately filled the cracks with superglue and they have stayed fine. However, I believe that if I didn’t fill them, further cracking maybe have occurred over the next week of hot weather before cooling down.

From what Nitta san told me, that was a very fine shamisen. If it didn’t get knocked, I don’t think it broke based on lack of structural integrity. My recent experience leads me to believe that temp./humidity is the culprit for super hardwood like kouki.

As Eric said, if the break is clean, it could be reattached with wood glue. :slight_smile:

#4

Ah I suppose that’s some incentive to install an A/C unit in my room. Thankfully it appears there are no other cracks or splits along the tenjin or sao.

Thanks for the replies!

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