I was eyeing this tree at a local flower market for a month. I knew the branch structure wasn’t ideal but I could resist the deadwood as I don’t have any other trees with that level of age and gnarly-ness.
I’ve wired some branches down to make a more consistent canopy but I’m not going to work it too much for now even thought it’s pretty healthy.
I like the idea of cheating to the right a little bit for the front of it, just off its current face.
So first off, if there’s any immediate design things that pop out at you or you think would be cool to do, I’d love to hear it.
Secondly, with the deadwood being pretty extremely weather and having a lot of wet weather here in Taiwan, I’d really like to preserve the deadwood.
I watched a cool video with Troy preserving deadwood with lime sulfur and then penetrating epoxy.
Not fully understanding lime sulfur… would you consider forgoing it on this tree and just doing the epoxy?
Nice find! The bark and deadwood on the trunk and roots is phenomenal. I’ve not treat dead wood yet on any of my trees, so I’m not 100% sure about the lime sulphur reasons, aside from whitening the deadwood on junipers. if you’re looking to preserve the wood but not bleach it, I think you could use a wood hardening epoxy type. I know there are others that are better versed in preserving dead wood.
Does that hollow go all the way through the tree yet? I would be careful about getting a lot of water down in the trunk.
I like the front you styled to, and I think it was a good first work for the tree!
It is indeed hollow all the way through. Valid point. Do you have any ideas as far as addressing it?
Finding the right epoxy has been hard but it’s gotta happen, I’ll probably skip the lime sulfur.
Its position in the pot is how I got it, but looking at it flush with the front obstructs some nice moments of the trunk. I like to look at it from where I snapped the pics. Otherwise I just did some minimal wiring to make it a bit more photosynthetically efficient and generally tame it a bit.
Thanks for your encouragement and I will update in the future. Although I might not do anything dramatically different than its current iteration, I’d still like to hear what you or anyone else would consider doing stylistically/ angle change… etc.
I have a California juniper with a hollow that doesn’t punch all the way through too. I plan to ask Ryan about in when I meet up for a workshop. I’m not sure how to go about sealing or hardening it deeper into the trunk
If you search for Harry Harrington there will be videos on him using CA glue (similar aspplication to the epoxy Troy uses).
Regarding design. Eventually consider separating the foliage in the three distinct areas you have (2 branches and trunk).
I have went the harry Harrington way of preserving deadwood
It was so much superior to traditional wood hardener with deadwood. It gave me the idea while woodworking. I used the approach when building a piece of live edge furniture to preserve the bark on the live edge…and it has held up to children and pets. Worth taking a look!
Beautiful tree!
CA glue comes in different viscosities. For this you’d want the stuff that’s called ‘thin’ here in the USA. The glue sets fast when applied to wet stuff, so be careful. Applying a sodium bicarbonate solution after you’ve got the glue on will help it set faster.
How this applies to using it on a live tree, I’m not sure…
apologies I missed that comment about watching the video!!