This is one of two trees that I bought from a local nursery a few years back. I spend 800 bucks on the two trees. The top part of the trees were dying so I got them at a good price. After I got home I reduced the tree to a third of its height. This tree cough my eye as it had a beautiful deadwood feature. All I needed to do was grow in branches… to frame the feature.
I left the tree to grow and placed branches as they appeared. I also worked on the deadwood. If you take a good look at the close up of the tree you will see that there are two places that I work on the deadwood. I only carve small piece of wood away at times when I work on the tree. I learned a big lesson after I burned one of my trees in the past trying to do all the carving work at once. By taking my time and allowing the tree to recover in between sessions the wood also gets a more natural look to it. Creating a natural looking piece of deadwood is very difficult. I have tried a few different approaches. I bought different types of carving bits as not all the bits on the market are made for working on bonsai trees with a Dremel. I still need to get a bigger die grinder as the work that I’m doing now with my little Dremel is not what the Dremel’s were made for but as always then right tools are expensive and hard to come by.
My plan with this tree is to carve the hole at the bottom to the left so that it connects with the carved out middle section of the tree. I have started to drill from the top of the trunk to make the middle of the trunk hollow.
Here is a photo of the tree earlier this week before I trimmed back the branches.
Here is a photo after I pruned the tree.
As you can see the tree is much more open now and you can see more of the branch structure. The primary branches on this tree is now set and I am just working on the smaller details now. The other point that I would like to make is that there are a few spots on the tree where large branches were removed that I would like to heal over before I publicly show this tree. I have to get the carving work done as well. As there is no second chance to make a first impression.
This tree will be planted into a smaller pot in September. The container it is in now can not be carried around it just gets shifted around every now and then to allow the tree to get sun from all directions.
Bonsaiwithromano 