This may sound like a weird idea, but I have recently been offered some Oak railway sleepers, which have been kept inside for many years after they were removed and the wood looks gorgeous! I have been told the janka hardness is between 1260-1360. I could easily have enough wood to make a Shamisen (hey perhaps 2 or 3!) but I have never heard of a Shamisen made from Oak.
Should I give it a try?
oak is nice, it would be very interesting to see.
You should always mention your shamisen was once a railway sleeper, It will have a unique sound to it 
awesome idea
i would say: GO FOR IT
once my brother is done with University, he’s going to try and make a shamisen out of red cedar, which is incredibly beautiful, hard and rare and oh so Australian. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with
I have heard of some intro shamisen being made of kashi, or Japanese white oak. Check the wood carefully though. If they have been outside they may have splits in them.
imagine one made of peltogyne… drools
As a matter of fact Robert, check this thread out:
@Michael, my brother has a wonderful source for high grade white oak, my only concern is that it might crack once it’s been finished…
Just out of curiosity, If he was to make a really nice shamisen out of oak and purpleheart, how much do you think it would sell for?
In Japan they make kouta shamisens even from local oak (nezumi-)kashi, white mulberry wood (Morus alba) kuwa and Ceylon satinwood (Chloroxlylon swietenia) shiro-kouki.
However, kouta shamisen differs a bit from other shamisen. Bachi is not used etc.
http://kouta-renmei.org/english.html
hmmm, a white tsugaru shamisen would be the envy 
Here is a picture of an oak shamisen. It looks very nice to me. I usually see these as listed as white kouki.
The wood I was shown did have a lot of splits but because of the length of the wood it would be easy (hopefully) to work around those splits and make all the parts in individual sections of non-split wood. It was originally kept outside but has been kept inside for at least a year so hopefully it has split as much as its going to. If it does not work it’s not the end of the world as I can just use it for practice and come up with a plan B!
@Michael
The oak my bro is sourcing is going to be silver/white as opposed to cream/white, so it should be a ghostly white tsugaru shamisen
@Tegan
I hope that is the case, it would suck to come back to your shamisen after a night’s sleep and find that the skin was intact, but the sao had split… I reckon it’s worth the risk!
Good luck with it