rockm

Or you can carve and thin the deadwood out to lighten it up above the swelling. That would help alleviate the "chunkiness" of the trunk above the nebari... If left untended, the reverse taper is going to get worse, as the life veing increasesin size and the entire portion, live wood and deadwood looks alot bulkier.

Rarely do collected trees immediately lend themselves to being bonsai. Some good ones and excellent ones--like this tree--need some tweaking to make them truly wonderful. Leaving them "as is" doesn't make them bonsai...