Anchoring Guy Wires - Share Your Techniques, Tips, Tricks

[River's Edge]

When you use guy wire, are you just using 1mm bonsai wire for the wire? I have at least one tree that I think would benefit from guy wire to lower some branches but I've actually never done it before. Tried it with thicker wire last night and it was definitely not what I wanted.

For guy wires strength and thinner diameter are a better combination. Therefore I suggest you use copper or stainless steel for guy wires. Much stronger and less obtrusive. A smaller gauge copper such as #16-#20 will handle most guy wire situations!

 

[badatusernames]

For guy wires strength and thinner diameter are a better combination. Therefore I suggest you use copper or stainless steel for guy wires. Much stronger and less obtrusive. A smaller gauge copper such as #16-#20 will handle most guy wire situations!

awesome, thanks, I'll grab some. I started trying to mess around with the 1mm wire last night in kind of a lazy way and it was not going well, haha

 

[leatherback]

are you just using 1mm bonsai wire for the wire?

smaller in most cases. .5mm copper does fine in most cases.

 

[jkennedy2316]

You can wrap a thin wire around a thicker wire, and thread it up through the drain holes. Guy wires are limited to moving a branch in one plane only, and I try to use them more to pull two branches closer together rather than as a primary styling technique. I also use screws to anchor them if I can do it without leaving scars in visible locations:

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Guy wires Using guy wires added a new dimension to styling trees. It’s one thing to read about it, but give it a try if the design calls for it. When? Why? Bend larger branches that would requir…

nebaribonsai.wordpress.com

Do you have any more photos of your bonsai bench? I like the along the fence look.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Do you have any more photos of your bonsai bench? I like the along the fence look.

Thanks, it was a couple houses ago, but here are a few.

 

[happytreenut]

So I took a unusual approach recently as a sort of expirement. I put my trees on a plant stand, tied a stick to the stand, then used wire to pull the top of the tree in a direction.

I am however getting some bite already and noticed some needles turned brown about a week later. Anyone ever experience this?

 

[shohin_branches]

So I took a unusual approach recently as a sort of expirement. I put my trees on a plant stand, tied a stick to the stand, then used wire to pull the top of the tree in a direction.

I am however getting some bite already and noticed some needles turned brown about a week later. Anyone ever experience this?

Did you put any padding around the wire? Do you have a photo?

 

[pandacular]

The way it was demonstrated by my teacher was something like the following. Note that I have not done this myself, but have seen it demonstrated multiple times.

1) Take a large piece of aluminum wire, 3.5mm+, depending on the size of the drainage hole. The length should be enough to wrap from the drainage hole to the upper rim of the pot, with at least 12cm extra length.
2) Jam the wire into the drainage hole, a few cm is fine, doesn't need to be too deep
3) make a tight right angle towards the edge of the pot, then another bend over the edge, to vertical. This will put the upward force of the guy wire onto the bottom surface of the pot, keeping it anchored.
4) Make a loop with a few twists of wire, then anchor your copper guy wires to that loop. My teacher was putting 5 or more wires on a loop with no problem.

I wish I had pictures or videos, because it's really intuitive when you see it.

 

[happytreenut]

Did you put any padding around the wire? Do you have a photo

I ended up adding some rubber pieces to pad the wire. You'll notice I'm not using training wire. Instead I'm using random wire I had scrapped from a cord.

 

[pandacular]

As luck would have it, I had reason to use this technique yesterday. It was very instructive—one note is its quite hard to do this close to the pot lip!

Note how I put the anchor through the drainage divot on the side. Tokoname grow pots are particularly good for this.