I glued the nut onto the Tenjin. I made the nut out of thin brass. I folded it over a few times and hammered it (even though I guess I could’ve used a thicker thicker brass or copper. Anyway, after I glued it, we noticed that the edge of the nut rises up a bit and that may be a problem. Of course, it’s a very small problem and it may be just fine. It’ll still be very playable.
Monthly Archive for July, 2006
Page 2 of 4
Since I didn’t want the skin covering all of the beautiful crafted wood (not to toot my own horn. In fact, I’m tooting the woods horn!), I trimmed off the excess parts.
Before that, I had to scrape away the dried rice glue that was stuck from the first and second skin stretchings. That was hard stuff to take off. There is still some marks of the sandpapering that I couldn’t take away but that’ll all be covered by the Dokake.
Yeeeooo! This morning, I uncovered the skin (since I had a towel over it) and was very pleased to hear a sharp tight sound as I tapped on the skin.
Since there is extra skin that had to be glued down, I got the extra rice glue and pasted it on all the edges/flaps that was sticking out.
- On a side note, when I first made the glue two days ago, it tasted pretty good since it was just flour and water but now it’s smelling rather ungodly. -
The slight problem was, after the skin dries, it becomes very hard and stiff and when I put the glue on and pressed down, it didn’t stay down to well. On three sides, I put on enough glue to moisten the skin. I didn’t realize until the last side that I could just dip the flap in water to soften it. So I did it, and it stuck down like a charm. For good measure, I put a bungee cord over it.
Later today, I’ll stretch the second skin over.
Well, I had a feeling this might happen. Yesterday, I streched the skin to the same pitch as the Tsugaru shamisen but overnight, the skin loosened five tones (or steps or whatever)! Even lower then the shamisen we have! So, I had to take off the skin and start over.
Fortunately, I had Luke and Luke’s girlfriend (phillis) helping me and they held down the clamps when I wrapped the rope around. Not only that, I tightened the nuts on the clamps to make them hold the skin harder.
This time, it’s gonna work!
So, I hammered the clamps onto the edges of the skin and tried putting it on the body (without the glue yet). The clamps kinda limped to the side (when they should be sticking up right against the body) which meant I hadn’t put enough skin under the clamp. So, I redid that and then slathered a small bit of glue on the rim of the body and put the skin on.
When I wrapped rope from the clamps to the wood/nail contraption on one of the sides, the clamps started to lift up ’cause I was pulling on the clamps from one side and not pulling from the other side. That messed things up a bit. What I decided to do was to very lightly wrap the rope around the clamps, light enough that the clamps on the other sides wouldn’t rise up. That kinda worked. After I went around once, I did it again even tighter. After I went around tighter, I got another rope and went around even tighter. Going around tighter with the other rope made the first rope loose. So, I removed the first rope and wrapped it around tighter. By this time, a couple of the wedges on a couple of the clamps got loose and the some clamps slipped off the rope slipped. I managed to put them back on but I had to be careful with ‘em. After putting the rope back on, I proceeded to put the wedges on. That was really tough on the fingers ’cause I was wrapping 5 layers of rope around themselves. But, in the end I got them on.
When we borrowed a Tsugaru Shamisen, I recorded the sound of me tapping on the skin to get a recording of the pitch/tightness. So, since Luke has the best ear, he tapped on the skin on the stretched skin and matched it up with the recorded pitch. When I got it the same, I put a cloth over the body and let it rest overnight.