I experimented with an epoxy-based concrete to seal deadwood. I applied to a piece of pine bark as well as, and more importantly, I applied it to a piece of mushy soft deciduous deadwood. The product was absorbed through the pores and the deadwood is now hard and waterproof. I specifically used a wet-look sealer so the result is shiny. I didn’t try yet with a natural look sealer but I imagine it should work too. The goal of this post is to share this information so others can experiment too as concrete sealers are extremely cheap and widely available in big box stores.
I would love to have more info on this as I am currently trying to find similar things that can be used to preserve deadwood, where I live there is absolutely no Bonsai specific products and shipping everything I need can be quite expensive as no big online stores ship to my country i.e Amazon.
I doubt this can harm a tree as it is a superficial treatment in the deadwood alone. You can use also PC Petrifier that I know is used for bonsai without harm.
This is experimental. Please note that depending on what type of sealer you get it will be shiny. Test on something not too important to validate that it is not harmful. Even though I think it should not be, I never tested it on deadwood still attached to a tree. Otherwise, I suggest you use PC petrifier that you can order through amazon.
Yeah I have some stuff to try on and was planning on doing so, I mean, first I need to actually find the different products at my local shops, its quite hard to get stuff here and as I said my biggest problem is that shipping with Amazon is super expensive since I have to first ship to a consolidator in Miami that then brings it to me + charges me quite a bit depending on the product + extra taxes in my country… it all sucks a bit lol. So I like to exhaust every other opportunity before I order something online. Thank you, I will experiment on some pieces of bark and deadwood I have around and I’ll come back with my own results and post them here on this thread so we can have more data input.
Guatemala, in Central América, spent some years in Italy where I started getting into Bonsai but now I’m back here and full into the mysteries of Bonsai lol.
Weather is actually quite good for Bonsai, quite temperate all year round but it’s a hassle to source tools, substrates, fertilizers… I’m in the process of getting some Bio Gold for example and to bring a bag of 5kg I end up paying double the listed price on Amazon… So yeah… I mean, I can bring small things without too much problem but I do end up paying around 30-40% more for small items as well, tools are quite alright since they don’t pay taxes here when you import but everything else can be a problem, specially agricultural amendments like fertilizer…
Definitely, been slowly collecting autochthonous trees, hard to work with them since most of them want to grow very big very fast and there is close to no information online about them, the bright-side is that its really hard to kill this trees lol. I see many trunk chops in my future…
Here’s an ugly tiny stump of a corkscrew willow that I had growing. I repotted and styled it and then instead of removing the deadwood I instead carved into a sort of spiral. A bit on the top broke off so I put it in place with two bits of copper wire. The top of the deadwood is floating in the air. I then sealed it with concrete sealer. It hardens the deadwood and makes it impervious to the elements and shiny. No deadwood in deciduous be damned, I will make the main shiny feature on the tree.
