my koma is plastic and is cutting my strings apart
i just watched it happen 
The notches look very small. You might have to file a larger one for the ichi-no-ito.
It feels like the string should be able to take that though.
oh god… my koma just snapped x.x;; why is it made of such cheap plastic?
i feel like im gunna be sick x.x;;
i dont feel good having heard that snap after as softly as i could possibly muster i bent it as it didnt seem straight… and now one of the sides is snapped off
It does look kinda thin. I don’t know if there are different strings for your shamisen. The tsugaru strings might be too thick for the koma. Have you tuned the strings with a too high pitch?
nope havent tuned them high at all… it was very loose… last night it was in hon tuning though cfc i think it was…
not sure if it was tsugaru strings or not though… couldave been minyou or somthing?
they had an odd texture like … string string… like yarn/ rope but smaller?
I made a koma out of a bamboo kitchen spatula I got from Muji… it sounds just like the real thing! ha ha.
Kind of fun to play around making your own koma too. was pretty easy to make with my Proxon (Dremmel type tool), but am sure that with some files and a small saw you can make one easy enough.
Yeah sorry to hear that you can’t play Cana 
I’m not very experienced with these things so I’m merely trying to figure out how it could happen.
Also one thing that might have to do with your koma snapping is that it’s totally badly designed. The area below the notches should be supported by what connects the base with the saddle. At least it does on the koma I’ve seen.
@Karl, there was nothing wrong with the design, it’s a standard koma design for its genre (you can see the same items here in both plastic and ivory, sold on Shamisen Katoh’s website - 三味線かとう オンラインショップ). However, that type of koma is, indeed, pretty fragile, and one needs to take a bit more care handling it than some other styles…
@Pete - making your koma from a bamboo spoon - brilliant!! 
And it’s a very nice looking piece of work, too.
they had an odd texture like … string string… like yarn/ rope but smaller?
Cana, it looks like yours were silk strings (at least strings one and two). Yup, silk strings can sometime feel yarn-like, especially as they get older, I find (from having handled a few pre-war ones…). While watching your unpacking vids yesterday, I noticed the vendor wound the strings up pretty closely around the neo, and then you had to do a bit of work to untangle them. I think it’s likely that the winding and untangling may have weakened the strings somewhat, leaving them prone to fraying on your koma…
So what do you gain from not having the connect directly under the notches? To me the design doesn’t seem optimal, even though it obviously works for other materials as those komas you linked have been around for while.
In any case, I guess it could have been a bad batch of plastic.
oh man that sucks like beyond words . . . strings and koma broken . . . awesome idea for a koma, Pete
Bleh, that’s terrible.
You might want to try smoothing out/enlarging the notches with a small file if you can find one.
Great looking Koma, Pete : )
I made my get by until my order comes in Koma out of Bambo Chopsticks…
It does not look very nice, but it works…
You should be able to find stuff to get by just look around…
You’ll be amazed what you can find to work with… : )
Cana, no need to give up playing until you get a new koma and strings.
As everyone has been saying, you can use anything you like for a koma for now - a pencil stub will do in a pinch.
As for the string, you can just unwind a bit from the itomaki and tie the frayed end onto the neo.
As far as tuning goes, C is pretty high. In the past, to save wear and tear on strings, some players played as low as the shamisen could go. I have some recordings with the shamisen as low as the E below the C you are probably tuning to. Tune it as low as it will go and still make a sound, then go up a bit from there. That should keep you safe until you get some spare strings.
By the way, Pete, that is a great looking koma! Since you’ve already gotten that far, the next steps would be to put a bone saddle on top, and maybe experiment with shaving away excess bamboo to find the perfect weight/strength balance.
haha guys, worst of news ^^;; my laptop broke today aswell as the koma… and string problem… and i havent been able to sign in all day really but i facebooked luke he fixed it, apparently when i 1st got on site my email was missing a charactor
So thanks luke!
as for my laptop its inverter died… (7 year old laptop)
Good ideas, i will try an make a koma ive been playing with the idea of making one all day, ill try to improvise something tommorow may pick up a stick just outside and file it down with a nail file xD
my koma is broken but i have the pieces and ill trace them to make a replica but in wood… theres willow down near the river i wonder what that would sound like?
Thanks everyone! Also since theres lots of extra string wound at the top of my itomaki i may be able to pull some down and retie it to the neo?
whats your thoughts on this?
anyways night guys, not had the best of days lol
will try an reply when i can, but i dont have the money to fix my laptop right now.
The strategy Gerry mentioned and that you are asking about is exactly what you should do to make your strings last as long as possible. You play them until they look like they are in danger of breaking and then you “stretch them out” by unwinding the itomaki and retying the string on the neo.
nice koma Pete, how long did that take???
Hi Liam, it is the second one I’ve made. I got a bit carried away shaving material off the first one and it didn’t last long before imploding. I think it took about half an hour with my proxxon
http://www.proxxon.com/eng/html/28481.php
I have thought about mounting some bone into one as well.
I was quite surprised how easy it was and how good it sounds actually.
I have a very nice Yammano (sp?) koma that I mainly use so this is my emergency koma in case anything ever happens to my main one (eek!)
okay will stretch out my san no ito then, also thinking off going down to the river and finding some sticks maybe making a willow bridge, i have no knives to do it but i’ll try an improvise something.
didnt see gerrys post >.< i think we posted same time last night, ill try an do somthing today i really wanna play.
hey pete, u should defo try putting some bone on one, you’ve done a really good job, I can’t believe you made a koma that good in such a short space of time