Here goes my first post...
I thought I would start off with something I have done last Thursday at late night.
It being a “
Practice” I have not since come across on the net yet, I am presuming that either I have not looked in the right places or the reason it is not applied is that it is a too sure way to kill/ruin a tree.
This is a Yamadori that I have had picked up recently.
A tree that I found beautiful and that I in fact liked…I loved the tree actually, and wish to waste no tree if possible, but it being a tree that I have not spent years nursing; I thought it suitable to do such an experiment with.
Unfortunately I have not taken any photo’s of the steps I took at the beginning; including my collecting. So I made a simple 3D illustration series illustrating what I had had done until the photographed images… Shall the photos not be descriptive enough, I shall try to simulate the steps of those as well with illustrations.
What was odd about this one was how it was able to grow in an ancient mound of rubble with its leader actually growing completely to it’s side for about two meters give and take.. So my new leader is not living a new positioning technically… it was always growing upwards. But when I got it home and planted it the branch was dramatically leaning sideways, thus the illustration is not totally accurate of the tree, but it was at the end how it was positioned to grow.
- Firstly as generally practiced I removed the largest branch saving one “new leader” to be and with a few hours of labour removed it from it’s grounds (For those that shall rightfully argue on why I went and collected a tree before spring; I had to hurry and save what ever I saw potential or not from there as already one half of the area was bulldozed, I replanted some I thought should developed some more and brought three of them back home with me).
- At home I tried to cut the trunk as such as I have had seen in an article HERE and was pretty anxious to try out…. But the darned tree was so tuff, it was simply not possible to bend it like that.
- Then I went to a method I presume most Arbosculptors tend to go for while bending thicker branches/trunks. And cut a notch along the bend…
The earlier carving provided I get away with making only one grove to successfully bend it. - I literally glued this fold to each other doing my best in the meanwhile not to break the other side or damage the cambium layer still contact.
After this had managed to set I feared permanently weakening a practically supportive portion of the tree I wanted to drill both ends and then insert a sort of peg or what not. But the angle being too odd for my being able to insert a standard peg, I decided to make a grove to be able to “slide” a peg in.
Which got me to the idea of not using a peg but a piece off the branch that I had cut off (I tend to bring home also a generous length of the thickest branch I have removed while collecting for dendrochronological intentions) and filling the gap as best I can and match the grains as best possible with hope that through healing it would end up looking like a pretty natural “shari”.
Getting a pretty successful result...
I went in fact further and inserted chips to fill remaining gaps… where it struck me to cover the sides with moistened and then folded wrinkles of removed bark from the branch sample I had.
I went pretty decorative and literally tried to hide any marks of interference in spite there being yet no healing.
Actually this is the part that scares me the most.. have I over worked the tree? And such have Iliterally doomed the upper segment into a slow death?
Or more obviously to ask, have I made a mistake with so much additions that most possibly the area is going to swell up like hell giving me a very non aesthetic trunk/reverse tapper?
And a wider shot:
Covered the surface generously with wound-paste:
I hope that this was helpful or at the least inspiring for few of you and would hope also that for those this is nothing too new nor intresting, I would like to hear from your experiences on the matter as well as advices.
Lets see how it is going to make it through a few growing seasons... I definately will try to update you
Thank you for sparing so much time on my jibbering long post.
cya;
Black