I am making my first shamisen from material provided locally in Alberta Canada, such as Poplar, White Spruce, and Alder. I was wondering if anyone has advice or things they would do differently.
I am making my Dou from the Poplar as the Alder, while a slightly harder wood than Poplar doesn’t grow to the size of it. I do have Willow available that is large enough to make the Dou. However, I would have to let the wood season for at least five to six more years as one piece was cut last year and I would have to get more cut this year. I am using the Spruce to make the Tenjin and Sao, and Alder for the Itomaki.
The Poplar has seasoned for approximately 8 or 9 years. The Alder for 4 or 5 years and the Spruce for roughly the same amount.
Hi Dana - Well I am on my fourth now, like you trying to source locally, I have a woodland with about 22 species, but like you most is freshly cut and needs longer to season, so I have been sourcing materials from a local hard wood merchants, offcuts from the furniture making business. So far I have made one completely from Mahogany, The Sao was a bit flimsy even though making a tsugaru size neck, the peg head cracked. I made that with a Sitka Spruce sound board instead of a skin, I made a second one using the first as a template, I made the Sao in one piece rather than practicing my Japanese joints, making it a little thicker and I think the grain was better I made the tuning pegs from Ebony, and just sanded the wood to 7000 grit it was beautiful to look at and play. Now the next two in production I have experimented with different woods, still not my own yet when seasoned I have (Lime, Poplar, Hornbeam, Beech, Ash, chestnut, oak, Alder to paly with) but these next two in production are one totally made from Black American Walnut, and the other from an exotic wood I got an offcut plank called Bubinga is very hard and extremely heavy and once sanded just shines without polish, it is a joy to make and shape, I made myself a new bench vice that sticks up above the workbench to hold the Sao when carving, I also use a few power carving tools for the Dou, attachments for my angle grinder, tungsten tipped blades makes carving really easy both the outside and inside curves. I have decided to take the plunge and put skins on these next two, I am going to use a calf’s skin for one and goat skin fro the other to see which works best, I have made similar Chinese instruments using snakes skin, so this will be a step up. I have just spent a day making forty Kisen clamps, and have just finished the stretching frames so I can then put the skin on using the traditional methods, my only issue is making the correct glue, as I was gogin to make the rice glue but have read in Kyle’s book I need to add something extra to make it stronger for the Tsugaru shamisen which both models are at the moment. Interestingly I bought a broken Sanshin while over in the USA a few weeks back so I could take it apart to understand construction better, the wood was very rough and not so well jointed and was very light compared to all the woods I have used so far, I read somewhere heavier hardwoods are best for the Dou, the Dou on the Sanshin is totally covered by the python skin so it doesn’t have to show, the skin was beautifully tight and the sound was similar to my Sanxian. Where possible if you have them or can source them traditional Japanese and Chinese tools are definitely the best from saws, to planes to rasps and chisels. Good luck with the build, if like me you get the bug I have in production a Japanese Biwa, a Chinese Pipa and another Erhu.
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Dana, cool to hear you are making your own shamisen! I am also in the process of making myself a new shamisen as well. Like yourself, my first shamisen was made with very cheap, local wood. I just used red oak lumber from a local hardware store to make it out of. Unfortunately at the time (over 10 years ago), Shamisen of Japan was not out yet, so I had to wing it a bit. The shamisen was very crude, and much larger than it should have been, but it worked great for a cheap learning tool to get me started in tsugaru shamisen. I think the whole project, including skins and everything, cost me less than $150 - I still have that shamisen now, sitting in my closet, and it has enjoyed several years of use.
For a first shamisen to get yourself started in learning for low cost, less dense and cheaper woods, such as poplar or spruce can work, though if you stick with shamisen and enjoy playing it you will find that you will want to upgrade to denser and harder woods eventually. Also, I would suggest using already kiln-dried lumber for your first shamisen, or even other shamisen after - it makes the work much easier, and there is less worry or headache about possible warping/checking due to improper drying, and best of all, you don’t need to wait and can start making it right away (unless of course you already have experience and knowledge about seasoning and making your own boards from raw wood). There are countless sources for wood that can provide wood large enough pieces for all of the parts of the shamisen, with a huge variety of wood to choose from.
I am fortunate enough to live right down the street from a really amazing local makerspace, so I have access to a lot of great powertools and working area (full dust collection, large space, bandsaws, tablesaws, chopsaws, and several sanders and thicknessers), so work on this new shamisen has been going very smoothly. Those tools do really help roughing out and prepping the blanks, but are in no way critical to make a shamisen. After everything is trimmed to size, I still rely on good old fashioned hand tools to do the rest of the carving and shaping (several rasps, files, a couple of small planes, chisels, and handsaws), as well as sanding blocks I make by using double-sided tape to attach sandpaper to various size and shaped pieces of wood for different purposes. For this new shamisen, I do need to rely on a high quality table saw and thickness sander due to the unique way I am making this shamisen, but isn’t as necessary for standard shamisen. I do also definitely agree with Jamie Stewart about sourcing traditional Japanese hand tools. They are some of the finest in the world for woodworking, and even entry level ones are terrific. I just recently bought a mid-sized Japanese dozuki saw and a small Japanese flush cut keyhole saw, and they have been an amazing help for cutting out tricky joints like the tenon for the nakago - even with the very hard and dense woods I am using now, they cut cleanly through them like they are nothing, and have been a great investment. Also possibly one of the best tools I have found indispensable for making this shamisen is a good sized, rough cut rasp. It works amazingly for rough shaping all of the curved edges and removing large amounts of wood quickly, and cost me less than $10. Also, well sharpened and maintained tools really make a massive difference!
For the skin of my first shamisen, I used some standard, slightly thicker vellum processed calfskins normally used for banjos. They worked well for my first shamisen, but definitely could have been much thicker and tighter. I made a very crude traditional rope-and clamp system to do the skinning, and just used regular white liquid Elmer’s glue for paper, which holds very well. For my new shamisen however, I will be making a modern mechanical stretching rig like the one Kyle recently bought, with adjustable toggle clamps, custom metal frame, and a car jack. I am also in the process of exploring synthetic alternatives similar to Ripple. I have one idea that I am going to experiment with on a couple of other shamisen I have that need re-skinning, using this material and a modern stretching rig. I don’t know if this material will work or not, but if it does, it could be a potentially great low cost alternative to Ripple for others who may want a synthetic skin without paying a lot for it. Either way, I will be posting this experiment on Bachido once I get around to it, and will also be posting a full build walk-through of my new shamisen once it is complete - right now I have about 150 pictures of the build, and by the end of the build I should have probably several hundred total, detailing every aspect of it.
I have also made numerous other instruments over the years, so those experiences have really helped me prepare for this new shamisen build - my previous instrument that I completed was a Chinese Guqin, which took about 8 months, and after I spent about a year or so engineering my own synthetic strings for the Guqin, which I have since collected and posted hundreds of data charts on harmonic content analysis of various types of strings, and provide open source material freely to anyone else looking to make their own strings for it. I also have made my own twisted-core synthetic strings for the shamisen out of a few different materials as well, and have been playing around with it on one of my other shamisen. Like jamie said, if you catch the bug, you will find yourself wanting to make many more instruments! Good luck with your build, and keep us posted on the progress! If you have any other specific questions, just ask away! I always look forward to hearing how new shamisen builds go and what people come up with!
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