Hello All
Does anybody knows what tanning method used for traditional Kawa processing?
I was able to find references for Vegetable Oil tanning as well as Alum tanning in making armor and wearable leather but nothing on Shamisen Kawa so far…
Best regards,
Alexey
In my opinion/experience it is not tanned at all but rather used as a rawhide. Though depending on whatnot, there might go through some sort of treatment, I don’t think it would be tanning per se.
I have used goat and lambskin on shamisen and deer. cowhide and elk on my koras. All Rawhides.
For sure, on armour and clothing type bits and pieces it would be tanned but I would say on drums, shamisen etc rawhide is the way to go.
Very interested to hear other perspectives here!
Cheers
Cath
Hello Catherine
Thanks for your opinion on skin treatment. I have seen your shamisens and they look amazing.
As Kyle introduced a new “Vintage Tone Skin” he mentioned what the skin gets processed the same traditional way as the Dog and Cat skins before.
As well the tanning process is the only I knew of to get the white color instead of amber transparency of the raw hide. It seems it is quite close to vellum production used in Europe.
It would be very interesting to have a pick on a “trade secret”
Best regards,
Alexey
Comes out the parchment or vellum was not tanned. The white color was achieved by an equivalent of tanning by thin pastes of lime, flour, egg whites and milk rubbed into the skins. (As I mentioned before, one of old Japanese methods was to use canola oil or similar products for tanning)
Hello!
That´s an interesting topic. I´ve been searching for alternatives and while I put my mind on kangaroo rawhide for the tsugaru (which, unfortunately won´t happen now), I also bought a parchment (vellum,pergamen) to try it out on an old nagauta. I am far from reskinning the shamisen but thought that I could post pictures of the parchment, if anyone was interested to see how the skin looks like.
Old kawa against parchment
Texture of parchment (back and front)
Thickness of kawa (top) vs parchment 0.6mm (bottom)
p.s. Sorry, I feel like I am all over the forum these past days but I cannot not share if it can help others 
Looks like it can work well on nagauta! Id it is a real vellum it should be as strong as the cat skin at least. It might work on tsugaru as well IMHO. I was thinking of using parchment myself but ended up buying white goat skin for drums instead. Also had a really good result with natural color goat skin but the look is not classic at all 8-), as it is not white and just shaved instead of completely deleting the hairs.
I saw your post about the reskinning, that was really cool! I thought that the dark goat looked interesting but now that you say it´s with some hair… 
Thanks! It is actually smooth as hair do not stick out, it just embedded into the skin and visible because of this 
Oh, ok 
Well, if I ever get to the reskinning with parchment, I will post some updates. Unless, of course, someone else tries it first!
Where you have got the parchment from by the way?
Any useful links?
I might try it at some point as I am planning to re-skin my “silent shamisen” with either ballistic nylon or natural skin.
Ah, I am in the Czech republic and got it in a tiny obscure store in Prague. They don´t even send internationally 
I don´t know how it is elsewhere, but nice parchment is really hard to find.
I see. I had some suspicions about your location from your last name 8-). There is a plenty parchment sold on Etsy and it is even possible to specify the thickness and the animal (goat, sheep and calf) but the price is a bit off: around $60CAD plus $20CAD shipping. I would stick to drum heads for now.
Ahaaha, yes -ova can give away a lot
Well, I haven´t thought about looking on Etsy but the price indeed 
Eeek! We´ll have to do with what is available for now…
Yup. The skin is rawhide and not tan. Tanned skin/pelt are flexible. I been learning how to process process raw skin. Very gross.
I been thinking of coyote or fox skin since where I lives people shoot them to protect their animals.
Gross fact: brain matter are commonly use to tan animal skin.
" Every animals has enough brain matter to tan itself "
This saying I am not sure how true.
Correct. Brain (mostly protein) can be used for processing the skin.
From what I was able to find, the process of manufacturing of shamisen skin involves soaking the skin in running water (mountain stream), using some vegetable protein to thaw it and sun drying to get the white color.
The problem is I can’t find any description on the exact method.
