Last weekend Dan brought a Japanese Black Pine, to the garden, from his personal collection at home. This is a tree he had grown from seed over 43 years ago. It is very indicative of his early work. He has done a lot of work over the years to it. He decided to bring it in so that we could up-pot it and decide on a new front. As he was not satisfied with the one it had.
He showed me the tree, asked me to choose a new front for it, and then left me to consider it for a little while. He's very interesting that way. He lets me toy with design ideas without his presence to influence me, or make me self conscious. I ultimately chose to shift the tree about 30 degrees to the left, and to tilt it to better balance the exaggerated curve it has to the back. Which I felt made for a much more desirable trunk line.
After a time Dan returned and I told him what I felt and why. He agreed with it, and accepted the new position for the front.
In inspecting the base, Dan found significant die back in parts of the base. He used his die-grinder to expose these areas to the live parts of the trunk. The dead area went from the back of the tree around to the front. The nice part is that the proposed front shows off the most visually interesting area to great advantage. (Talk about luck!)
The following photo is the tree in it's original container, in it's original position. This is to the point where we left it last weekend. Unfortunately I do not have a photo of the tree before he started carving it.
So this is where we started from today with the tree. It still needed to be up-potted. But a new issue presented itself to us the previous weekend. The upper line of the main trunk was static and possessed too much visual mass compared to the lower, very dynamic base and deadwood. We discussed how to deal with the problem and agreed that creating a shari in that area would change the way the eye flowed up the trunk. So this was the first thing which was addressed with the tree today.
Again Dan used his makita die-grinder with a router bit, to remove bark. But this time he was not searching for the edges of life, but rather creating an artistic element only. There was no dead area in this section. Based on the movement, growth of the tree, and consideration to previous work done ; Dan removed enough bark to create the image we were after, but not so much as to completely disrupt the vascular flow to the crown. This area may be increased in time, especially on the left side of the shari.
The next few photos shows Dan carving out the new shari. Notice the way he holds the tool. The positioning of his left hand provides the finer control, while the right hand is managing the bulk of the machine. Never in the process of actually carving the tree do his left middle finger, and ring finger fail to have contact with the tree. In carving the lower portions of the tree on the previous weekend, we had to actually remove the tree from the pot. So that I could position the tree into various angles which would accommodate this needed contact with the material. It is essential to control.
The next photo shows the tree after we up-potted it, and put it into it's new position. This also shows Dan working on a rear branch that had not had a lot of work done to it previously, but Dan had never been willing to remove it. The second photo shows the back branch he was working on in detail.
The next steps for this tree will be to allow the exposed wood to dry out until later this summer. At which point Dan can fine detail the carvings using a small burr and a dremel. The tree will be fully re-potted next year so we can address the tuber like rootage that is undesirable. This will most likely mean that the base in this area will be mounded to a degree, but with care taken to not bury the carved wood on the base.
Also... we are having discussions about jinning a a significant portion of the front part of the crown. But none of that work will be done to the tree at this time.
Kind regards,
Victrinia