This new shamisen has taken a lot long to make. I notice I’ve made more ‘lack-of-attention’ mistakes with this Shamisen. I think with the first one, I was being exceptionally careful but when I moved on to the next one, I got a feeling of confidence which made me make some blunders. In anycase, I messed up one of the angles on one of the dou pieces by trying to file the angle smooth (since the surface was a little bowed). Trying to file it smooth and even took off 1/8″ of wood (more than I had expected). So, not only did I take off too much wood, the angle got too obtuse. I had to find a way to get it back to normal. A right-angle jig had to be made. With a right angled surface with sandpaper on the ends, I could sand it back to normal. To keep it set to the right angle, I had braces on both ends to hold it in it’s proper place. When the piece would get smaller due to sanding, I would move the braces closer to keep it tight.
It worked pretty well with one of the body pieces. I managed to get the proper angles back. Since one of the pieces had been made smaller by the sanding, I would have make the opposite piece exactly the same for it to fit right. So this next piece, I’d be taking off 1/8″ of wood. Through this next piece where I did a lot of sanding, I found out that there were a couple things wrong with m’ jig. I wanted to right those wrongs before starting on another piece.
One was that sanding took a long time. Not just that, trying to get the sandpaper flush with the brace took a while ’cause I clamped the sandpaper to the wood using a screw clamp. As we know with a screwclamp, when you turn the handle, that turns/rotates the part of the clamp that touches the wood, sandpaper or any surface. Well, when I had the sandpaper flush with the wood, the rotating part of the clamp presses against the sandpaper and since the part of the clamp rotates, it also twists the paper therefor, “unflushing” it. I did manage to get it right but it took quite a bit of time.
Another problem was after I sanded, a little bit, the wood would get a micrometer smaller and I’d then have to take the sandpaper off, move the braces closer, and then put the sandpaper back (which all took more time than it should). Also, the sandpaper would tear which made me start the whole thing over again.
Two things had to be changed. One, not needing to move the braces. Two, an alternative to sandpaper. Well, for the braces, we decided to due which wouldn’t require me to remove the sandpaper was slipping sheets of paper on both sides. this raised the sandpaper off making the distance shorter which was needed when the shamisen body piece got shorter (and when I short, I really mean about 1/2 mm). So, for this next piece, I did that. that had been going along famously. However, after I got the piece to be the same length as the first one I did, I noticed that, while the angle was fairly true, it was bowed! Not good! The best explanation was that all the paper (to raise the sandpaper up) that was under the sandpaper changed the levelness of the flat wood underneath. So, after all that, I had to go back to the original “brace moving” strategy.
I got ‘em both pretty accurate. Not perfect but good enough for now. Now I had a new change to make. Instead of sandpaper, I would use clamp a flat file down on both surfaces. Not only would they be straight, they would also grind off wood much quicker than sandpaper would. We had just the file to use: A Nicholson Farrier file. Unfortunately, we only had one so we went to the hardware store to get another. That story will follow.
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