Let’s Bend! Part 2
31 Jan 2012 5 Comments
in Bending Techniques, Black Pine
Do you remember this Black Pine? Back In July of 2011 I bent the trunk of this tree and wrote a post about it called Let’s Bend! Click on the link if you want to see how I bent the trunk and what the tree looked like when I first worked on it. After I bent the trunk, I then de-candled the tree and pulled the old needles down to 5 pairs.
During this time of year, we’re busy prepping for shows and doing a lot of wire work on conifers. Every time I walked by this tree in the yard, I would always stop to look at it to see how it was doing. A couple of days ago, I bent down to look at it again and Mr. Tanaka said, “okay, okay that is your next job!” Apparently he’s seen me eyeing the tree many times since July. I’m always excited to continue the work on a developing tree! Now for the next step!
Here is what the Black Pine looks like now before I worked on it. Since the bend and de-candling, the tree didn’t skip a beat and filled in nicely. The foliage is nice and green.
Here is the tree after I finished. I removed the guy wire in the front but left the guy wire in the back that is holding the bend in the trunk. I felt the wire and it’s still somewhat tight so the bend isn’t holding just yet. Next, I pulled all the old needles off and the new needles down to five pairs. I also thinned out the new candles to one or two pairs.
As for the wiring, I bend just about every branch down and started creating fan shaped pads. As I worked up towards the top of the tree, the pads would progressively get smaller. The top of the tree is somewhat thin at the moment but there are buds there and I’m sure next year new branches will fill that area in no time.
Mr. Tanaka looked at the tree and did some very small adjustment so the after picture pretty much looked the same. He moved a couple of branches in the back and spaced them apart a bit more evenly then I did (I still have a tendency to pay less attention to the back of the tree). Other then that, he was happy with the outcome of the tree.
Effects of de-candling
Three things happen when you de-candle a tree in the Summer.
1. The new candle internodes are shorter
2. Branch division
3. Shorter needles
What’s the next step?
Around March, I will repot this tree to it’s new angle. I’ll be sure to post about it then. Mr. Tanaka and I was looking at the roots and discussing what we would have to do with the it to get the tree into the new angle. Here are some things we saw.
Here is a close up of the root spread
From the picture, you can see that there is a fairly large root on the left side of the tree. When I repot the tree, this big root will be buried under the soil line which will actually improve the root spread. Ideally a good root spread (Nebari) should have small roots radiating out of the trunk. If there are large roots coming out of the trunk, it can throw off the proportions of the tree and make the tree look less realistic.
Here is the main problem on the right side of the tree.
There is a large root coming from the back towards the front. Once I change the angle of the tree, this big root is really going to be exposed and affect how good the root spread will look. What can I do about this? Cut it off and cross my fingers?
Here is a shot of the big root from the side
The good news here is that at the back of the tree, the big root splits off into this smaller root. When I repot the tree, Mr. Tanaka and I plan on cutting the large root off and keeping the small one. This works out great because the small root we keep will help support the tree while it recovers from the large root being removed. Of course, we can’t be for sure until I start taking some soil away, but we pretty confident that we can remove the root during repotting and greatly improve this tree’s root spread. Once the angle is changed, this small root will be bent down with wire to the soil level so that its not just sticking up in the air. I can’t wait til March!
…and the photo history so far
The future of the tree
After repotting the tree in March, the new candles will start to push in April. I plan on de-candling the tree again during the Summer and continue the branch development to dense up the pads. Now I have two months to think of what pot I should use for this tree! Hmmmm…..?
Thanks for reading!
Rebar Basic On Black Pine
25 Jan 2012 22 Comments
in Bending Techniques, Black Pine
Rebar Basic on Black Pine
The day Mr. Tanaka left the nursery to bring trees to Kokufu-ten, he tasked me to style this Japanese Black Pine that belongs to a customer. He said to me, “this is a strange tree and may be difficult to make look good.” I asked Mr. Tanaka how much I can do to the tree and he said all I needed to do is wire the tree and make it look nice. I took that to mean that I shouldn’t do anything drastic to the tree… As you’re probably wondering why the title of this article included, “rebar,” seems to contradict, “shouldn’t do anything drastic to the tree.” Though many Bonsai hobbyist often correlate drastic work with the use of rebar, it turns out that rebar can be used for basic things and can be very simple to use with some practice. In this article, I will talk about how I used rebar to slightly bend the trunk of the tree and completely change the feeling and the overall look of the tree. For those of you who do not know what rebar is, it is short for reinforcing bar. It’s pretty much a iron bar that is used inside concrete structures to make them stronger.
Here is the tree after I wired the branches and bent some branches
I sat in the workshop for awhile looking at this tree trying to figure out what I was going to do with it. This is what I came up with and here are the reasons. Since the tree has already been somewhat styled for this side to be the front, I decided to continue using it but with some slight modification. I picked this front because it showed off the most movement in the trunk. I also thought that if I reduced the lean of the tree I could get the two trunks to complement each other better. The biggest problem with this tree is that the main trunk splits off into two trunks and are going in the opposite direction from each other. They also both have a good amount of foliage on each trunk. Perhaps I could have made a twin trunk tree but I wasn’t a big fan that the trunk separated half way up the tree so that didn’t happen. I decided to try and make this tree a one trunk tree and make the smaller trunk into a branch instead. Most people would try and hide the strange smaller trunk but I decided to bend it down and show off the strangeness with a more compressed curve. A simple guide wire and the second trunk bent down without any problems. The next thing I did was wire the branches on the main trunk and bend them down.
So what is wrong with this picture? There is something terribly wrong here because the two trunks looks more disconnect then ever. The tree looks conflicted and somewhat difficult to look at. The tree reminded me of two people that decided to stop talking to each other! That’s definitely not the message I wanted to convey to the viewer. I needed to do something to get these two talking again and I knew I had to do something with the trunk. I was somewhat conflicted inside as well because he words, “nothing drastic,” kept coming to mind. What to do?!
Juan Andrade is a professional Bonsai artist from Costa Rica and is currently visiting Aichien to study for two months (Check out his Spanish blog at Bonsaitico.com). I called him over and asked him what he thought of the tree. His feelings were the same and said the magic words, “the tree would be nice if you could bend the main trunk back towards the second trunk.” At that point, I knew that’s what needed to be done!
So why rebar?
There are two reasons why using rebar was appropriate for the bend that I wanted to do. 1. The length of the rebar gave me more leverage to bend and requires less work on my part (lazy?). 2. Using rebar allows me to pinpoint where I wanted the bend to occur. Here is how I set it all up.
The first thing I did was place a piece of rubber on the end of the rebar. I tied a small piece of copper wire to the padding to hold it in place. This is going to be my pivot point (bend point) and there is going to be a lot of pressure here. If I don’t put some padding on the bar, I can damage the trunk.
The end of the bar is where the bend point is going to be. Since there is already a natural curve on the trunk towards the lower branch, it makes sense to start the bend here. I tied the rebar to the tree with a 14 gauge copper wire (Japanese 16 gauge) and used tubing to protect the trunk.
I then tied the rebar at a second point. Doing this will connect the rebar to the tree. Now when I pull on the rebar, the trunk will follow.
The next thing I did was tie a piece of wire to the point where I want to place my guy wire. This piece of wire will prevent the guy wire from slipping on the vertical bar placement.
Next thing I did was tie my guy wire above the stop wire. I put a couple of spirals on the guy wire so that can not potentially jump over the stop wire.
Since there was nothing I could attached the guy wire to at the base of the tree, I had to set an attaching point. I took 12 gauge copper wire and stuck about 2 inches of it into one of the drain holes under the pot.
I then bent the wire to follow the angles of the pot. Most people wouldn’t think this is strong enough to hold the guy wire but it is very effective and strong. I then made a loop at the end of the wire.
A couple of twist with two pliers and I have a new anchor point for my guy wire.
Here’s me bending the trunk and tightening the guy wire at the same time. This also marks the first time I have posted a picture of myself working (Thanks Juan!).
Here is a shot of the outside of the bend point. It started to crack slightly. A small crack like this is perfectly acceptable on a healthy Black Pine. Technically I can break this trunk more then 50 percent and it would still survive.
A little cut paste into the break and it’ll heal in no time!
Obviously after bending the trunk, many of the branches on the main trunk were pointing up so I had to bring them down again.
Here is the tree after the bend and readjustment of the branches.
As I was finishing the bend on the trunk, Mr. Tanaka came back home and took a look at the tree. He said that the rebar was a bit much and that I should find a way to get rid of it. He also added that, “when a tree has rebar and too many guy wires, it looks like an amateurs work.” Ouch!
I set up another guy wire from the top of the tree to the second trunk to hold the bend in the main trunk instead of keeping the rebar on the tree. Since the trunk started breaking at the bend point, it became the weakest point on the trunk. When I set up the new guide wire, the trunk wanted to bend at the break point so I retained the bend I wanted without the ugly rebar. I showed the tree to Mr. Tanaka again and he gave me the nod without adjusting anything (Great!).
So what do you think?
My thoughts, the future and what I’ve learned
It still amazes me how a simple bend of the trunk can change the feeling of the tree so dramatically. The tree went from two bickering halves to one coherent tree. The tree looks much more elegant to me now. I’m excited to see the continued development of the tree especially when the tree is repotted in it’s new angle. In my future work, I’m going to try and cut back the use of too many guy wires and make the work cleaner. This is especially important when the tree is going back to a customer’s house. If the tree was going to stay here, then a few extra guy wires and rebar isn’t too a big deal.
I would like to also add that this is just one way to use rebar and there are many other set ups that I could have used. Hopefully in the future when I use a piece of rebar again, I can get some shots of a different set up to get the same results and share them with you all. Perhaps you have your own method that suites you better. The setup isn’t especially important as long as you achieve the desired bend you wanted.
I hope you all enjoyed this post. I know I had a good time working on the tree and hopefully the customer will be happy as well when he sees the tree!
Thanks for reading!
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