Juniperus procumbens nana

Decoo

Hello,

I bought a juniperus procumbens nana in the garden centre and tried to make it into some sort of cascade shape. As this is my first attempt to make a bonsai, I hope to receive some comments on this tree to make it look better.

The first picture is the front side, as I see it. The second picture is the left side of the tree.

Thanks for your help

Ronald de Coo

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Decoo

This is the left side of the tree

TreeBay

There is a lot going on here.

On the left we start out with a slant style bonsai, and then towards the top it seems to want to be a cascade. You can either just cut back to the slant style tree, or do an "air Layer" (see ***FAQ*** or bonsaiTALK Links->Propagation->Layering) and try to preserve the cascade part as a separate tree.

A couple of virtuals are attached. You would really want to gry to get more lateral movement in the cascade. There are some suggestions on doing that in Mas Imazumi's cascade article in bonsaiTALK Links under Styles->Cascade

Regards,

Matt

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Decoo

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the visual, I will try to do air layering and hope it will work well and give me a nice cascade. Otherwise I still have the slanting part of the tree to work with.

I will also try to get some more shape in the cascade, because currently it is too straight. I already tried but I found it hard to get some nice bends in the trunk because of the thickness. Is there some technique to use more power to get more bends in a trunk, sometimes I see pictures of people using small crowbars or something, but do you know how they do this?

Thanks

Ronald

Jay

Ronald, it looks like you are using to thin a wire (doubled as it may be) to do the bend. If you do not have heavier wire you can redouble up on your largest wire. This should allow you to bend, gentle , this tree. Also is this aluminum wire, I use it too. The al is much softer and will not hold a bend as well as the copper, you may have to try it!

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zeb

If you're using [b:caad4f384f]aluminium[/b:caad4f384f] as it seems, you should use a wire that is [b:caad4f384f]1/3 of the trunk's (or branch's) diameter[/b:caad4f384f].
If you plan to use copper, you might want to use some strong equipment as thick copper wire is almost impossible to be bent by hand.

So I'd suggest to go with thicker aluminium and bend the trunk in small amounts at a time. First just form a basic look and then gradually increase the sharpness of the curves.


PS. I'm sorry if this wasn't too easy to understand, I'm from Finland.

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TreeBay

[quote:a110f85319]If you plan to use copper, you might want to use some strong equipment as thick copper wire is almost impossible to be bent by hand.[/quote:a110f85319]

Zeb, have you been annealing your copper wire? It should have a softness that's comparable to aluminum after heat treating.

We have been selling a lot of (annealed) copper wire through TreeBay, and I haven't heard this particular complaint before.

Click here for a link to ANNEALED copper wire

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zeb

Ah, nevermind. Just figured out that here we don't have copper wire for bonsai. I've only tried copper that can be bought from a hardware shop. It was definately meant for something else.

Does that annealing mean that you heat the copper and cool it ssslllooowwwly?

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TreeBay

Actually with copper it can be cooled slowly or quenched rapidly in water and it does not appear to affect the temper either way, unlike some metals.

If you do plunge it in cool water after annealing it "squeaks" and the surface oxidation pops off, which is a good thing, otherwise you get a nice spray of carbon dust all over you when you bend larger gauges of wire.

There is some info in bonsaiTALK Links under Techniques->Wiring on annealing wire. It take a hot fire to do it. You can use that bare copper from the hardware store, or reclaim some from salvage. It's easier still to buy it pre-annealed if you can afford it. It's helpful to know what the feel of well annealed wire is, anyway, so you know what to shoot for.

Regards,

Matt

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