Sculpting Deadwood

Francios Jeker‘s finger and dremel power carving tool. From Bonsai Today 105 (still available). It didn’t used to be this way Have you noticed how almost everybody carves deadwood these day? It wasn’t always the case. I just thumbed through Kyuzo Murata‘s classic Four Seasons of Bonsai (first edition 1991 and long out of print) and could find only 3 or 4 bonsai that had some carving (out of over 100 trees). The same goes if you look back through other older bonsai publications. New horizons Even though it’s overused, carving opens up whole new horizons for us bonsai hackers, … Continue reading Sculpting Deadwood

Trunk Splitter, Stump Splitter, What Else?

Graham Potter using a trunk splitter to tear into a large branch stump. It’s from a video on styling an old larch (one of Graham’s excellent videos) on his Kaizen Bonsai site. Why split? Did you know that you can bend thick trunks by splitting them (in half, in thirds, in fourths, etc)? After splitting and bending, you can tie the pieces back together (just the way they were) and, if you do it right, they’ll fuse back into the single trunk you started with (with its new shape, of course). For a detailed description of this process, see page … Continue reading Trunk Splitter, Stump Splitter, What Else?