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Making the dead wood

This is an important part of the process of making the tree, this will give the tree character and something of interest to look at.  Creating the impression of a natural mountain grown juniper in something grown from a cutting in a pot is difficult but we must look to nature for guidance.  As I mentioned previously, the material had been grown very well, made to twist and turn with branches left to grow on the outside of curves.  This was done for a reason, to allow the artist to create realistic looking dead wood.  The main feature of the tree will be the thickest bottom branch which I coloured yellow on the previous diagram.  This will have all the foliage cut off and the bark stripped to reveal the wood underneath; but more than that we will tear off the section of the trunk which was feeding it, all the way down to the roots, as if it were a natural tree.

A simple approximation of the growth pattern of junipers is that each branch has its own ‘independent’ section of live vein that goes all the way down to the roots.  It may twist and turn but you can trace the approximate path of water from a branch downwards.  If that branch should die, then the live vein feeding it will becomepen unused and die off, over time revealing the wood beneath. Experienced bonsai artists can read the life lines, knowing where they can cut, where can be removed safely and where is important.  Junipers can “move” their live veins, if a major artery is damaged, by insect, disease or man, then the water will find a path around the disruption within the cambium layer.  Over time this new path will become stronger and thicker.  This is a difficult concept to explain and not the point of this article so I shall move on.

In terms of creating this tree what we need to do is “read” where the life lines of the thick bottom branch flow and remove it.  At first this can be a difficult thing to do but if you look carefully at the surface of the skin and try to “feel” the line with your finger then you can usually approximate it accurately.  I drew a line on the trunk, half where I thought it would go, and half where I wanted it to go in terms of the design. The best way the remove the jinliving part of the tree is to lightly crush the end of the cut branch with a pair of pliers and then peel it back and down, this way it will follow its own natural path down. If you try to go off in another direction other than the line of the live vein then it will soon break, so it important to do this slowly and carefully, the ideal is to peel it unbroken all the way back like an apple. If it does break then pick away at the end and start knifeagain.  I find it best to do this by hand, but a pair of pliers can make it easier.  Once you have peeled it all the way down to the bottom then clean up the edges and the left overs with a knife and a wire brush.  Good tools are important and I can recommend this hard and sharp little Swedish carving knife, but it will only stay as sharp as you keep it…

 Ttophe same was done at the top.  I deliberately left a section of the uppermost branch to turn into jin.  Using the same technique I removed the bark down and inside the top curve and along the face of the trunk, to disappear behind the back. The most important thing is to not go perpendicular to the life line at any point, always move with the live down, if you want to change the direction from its natural course then this must done gradually, both physically and over the course of several months, a few millimetres at a time.  I avoided disturbing any of the life line feeding the major branches so I was confident that I could perform all the work at once.  If there is any danger of disrupting the supply to a branch then take it slowly.

All I did was to remove the live bark, clean up the edges and debris.  carveupThere is no need to spend a long time fashioning the dead wood into anything at the moment as it will be 3 or 4 years before the rest of the tree looks anywhere near completion and the wood will benefit from being left to dry out before being worked on. There is also the risk that the tree may not survive and thus render the work a waste of time. The most important thing is just to define the boundaries of dead and live wood as early as possible.  Once the tree recovers from the first and most severe bruising that it will sustain at my hands I will attack it again and increase the areas of dead wood, join the top and bottom together so that the live vein and dead wood entwine in a helical fashion.  As it is, that would be a step too far.

In a farm grown tree like this the wood is very soft and will decay quickly.  It has grown very quickly and has none if the hardness of true centuries old yamadori. This has drawbacks and benefits.  One benefit is that you can actually shape the recently deceased wood into a much more desirable position before rigor mortis sets in and the wood has dried out and set.  bentUnfortunately the bottom branch stands erect looking very healthy and unnatural.  Thankfully we can pull it down by applying some heavy wire and gently lowering it until it just starts to tear at the join with the trunk. Hopefully it will not spring back into place over the next year, if it does start to then it can be tied back down with a guy wire.  A lot of people use little gas torches to bend dead wood, a technique I myself use, but on a tree this size it would scorch the foliage above the flames, despite best efforts to avoid it.

I have deliberately left the jin longer than I ultimately want, this makes wiring and bending it easier, it will be reduced at another styling stage.  As with living branches, dead wood, once cut off cannot (realistically) be glued back on.

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