Winding direction in wiring

Design
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Miraiites,

I hope I don’t start a war with this post.

I rewatched the three Mirai videos on Structural wiring and detail wiring - essentially all the wiring theory as practiced at Mirai.

What struck me is there is very little mention about winding the wire in a branch clockwise or counter-clockwise depending on the direction one wants to bend the branch.

For @ryan what is most important is the position on the branch collar where there is contact between the wire and the branch. Of course you can hit a particular point on the collar coming with a wire from below or above and in doing so the wire would go clockwise or counter-clockwise. BUT if you are pairing that branch with another or if there is already wire on the trunk, that immediately defines the direction of rotation of the wire on one or another of the branches when considering the three checkpoints that Ryan defined.

I understand that if you are going to rotate a wired branch around its own axis for example to make branches coming from below and above become lateral branches, then you need to rotate in the direction that the wire is winding. If you were to rotate in the other direction you would unwinding the wire and create gaps with the branch.

However, other than that, simply to move a branch left or right or top or down at a particular point, the direction of winding of the wire doesn’t really matter as the wire goes all around and if you were to support the bend with the wire on the outside of the bend as with what is traditionally taught (not mirai technique) you could choose a position where that wire is at the right place. This possibility to bend anywhere any direction even if you were to follow what is traditionally taught (wire on the outside of the bend) is in direct contrast to what most people teach that if you want to bend a branch left, you must wind the wire clockwise and if you want to bend right you must wind counter-clockwise - matching the direction of the bend with that of the vector normal to the wire. Ryan bends on the point of contact of the wire on the inside of the bend and not on the opposite side and does so wherever that wire allows so there are multiple possibilities along the branch irrespective of the direction of winding.

I don’t quite remember every single video and it could be that there is more information from Mirai on the direction of winding the wire in other videos but the three fundamental ones on wiring do not mention it. So my question is, can anyone point me to other videos where that issue is discussed? Should I assume that it is an issue that is not important given the absence of any videos?

It would be great if @ryan or others with more experience with the Mirai technique could comment on this issue.

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Hey Rafi,

My takeaway was that the direction the wire gets wrapped is less important that the three rules for wiring that Ryan outlined. As you pointed out there are situations when you will need to follow another piece of wire or are trying to pair a two branches and you want to rotate in the opposite direction that such a pairing would allow. This is where splicing in another wire or the preformed hook will come in handy. In my limited experience I have not found wrap direction to make much difference for bends, only with rotations.

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Today’s homework for Bill

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There are little wiring tidbits all through almost all of the videos. Direction is important but it’s not the single most important thing I think sometimes. I seem to remember a time when he made a bend with the wire rotating the “wrong” way and Kendall asked about it. The response was that he could still place the branch where he wanted by rotating with the wire while bending to make it work.

I think. I wish I could find the video again cause I really don’t understand what happened and I’d love to watch it again (or two or three or four)

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Here’s the videos where he mentions the wire going the wrong way but he still place the branches where he wants them. It at the end of the raffia stream. - https://live.bonsaimirai.com/library/video/raffia

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