Update, September 28th: As mentioned below, the primary work on this restoration was finished in July. This shakuhachi has become my primary and, since I have recently begun learning a bit of "silver smithing", I thought it might be nice for this one to have some silver center rings (versus the original rattan, which had to be matched on the upper half).

Working with silver is a pretty amazing thing. It fine-sands easily and polishes beautifully. For the nakatsugi rings on this one, I used 18 guage sterling, shaped around a steel mandril, then a similar-shaped piece of scrap bamboo, then lightly on the actualy bamboo. Just prior to polishing, the abutting joint was not visible. While this was tempting, I really wanted a slight bevel where they meet, so I separated the halves a few millimeters and used a triangle file between them, to bevel both at the same time, uniformly. I drilled two, shallow, 3/64" line-up holes at the rear, with a micro-dot of black lacquer on their interior. I may, at some point, end up insetting some onyx or ebony... who knows?

I have also been needing to build-up and reshape the hozo, as it was missing a decent amount of bamboo on the right side when I received it (about 3mm in thickness). It fit okay enough to play for the interim, but since I was already installing new center rings, now was the time to do the hozo. All of the remaining info below is from the initial completion in July.

July 31, 2008: This 1.8 unstamped shakuhachi had a very nice piece of bamboo, good finger wear (who would play a bad shakuhachi long enough to create hole wear?) and the overall craftsmanship seemed proper, so I opted to purchase it and undertake the restoration. I am guessing this shakuhachi was made 40-50 years ago.

The major issues were as follows:

Missing utaguchi with "crooked" inlay slot • Moderate "exterior" crack and missing rattan in the nakatsugi area of the upper • Severe damage to the first 3cm of the lower bore beginning at the hozo, plus an adjacent, interior hariline crack • Overall grime, scratches and other little goodies I wasn't worried about. Once wiped clean, the rest of the bore was in excellent shape and showed quality work; tuning was excellent.

The restoration:

I went with an ivory utaguchi inlay. Having a partial fondness for symmetry, I decided to float and fill the lower left side of the inlay to straighten everything out. Upper crack was repaired and new rattan applied--was fun to match the tone of the original rattan on the lower half (which is now sterling silver, as of 9/28/08).

Since the first several inches of the lower bore were seriously gouged and had urushi flaking off, that entire area was scraped, filled and re-lacquered (the minor interior crack had been there for years and never spread, so it was also addressed at this stage). Most everything else, aesthetically, was just scrubbing, cleansing, polishing, etc.

There is no way to know exactly what this shakuhachi sounded like when it left the maker's hands, but I think I got a good idea based on the existing, undamaged bore profile, which accounted for about 75%... more than enough to ballpark balance and pressure points. Even the first few blows yielded a solid, clear tone that let me think the original maker was of significant caliber.

The result is one of the nicest shakuhachi I have ever played. It has vintage warmth, yet with a penetrating tone. Otsu allows great timbre sculpting, and kan sings with a smooth and solid grace. Ro's are very strong, with great width. This has now my become my primary 1.8. I just wish I could know who the original maker was. Maybe an historical, renowned shakuhachi master, maybe just some guy named Bob.

While I did do a lot of work on this one, including a healthy amount of bore repair/tuning, much of the original heart remains (as well as all of the initial harvesting, exterior labor, etc.). Consequently, my hanko went on just the lower rear portion of the bottom half, instead of adjacent to the thumb hole.

:)