Creating a groove for your wire?

[A Random User]

Stacy, I've wanted to see some pictures of that process for a while. The winding deadwood around the live vein looks cool and I'm sure over time will look better. On the other hand I don't like the way it currently looks on the completely dead branch.

An aside, I've seen people letting wire bite into developing pines to fatten them up, not create Shari, and it looks like shit. Like a busted can of biscuits. Like a new bonsai style called the Michelin Man. I wonder if anyone has done it in a convincing manner.

Or the Dog Turd Twisted Shimpaku, as one of my friends puts it? Which makes me laugh every time he says it!
I think the deal for me is often how and in what overall concept the tree is presented...
By this I mean, yeah... Junipers and Pines can twist all crazy and can even puff up like the Michelin Man under
perhaps certain circumstances... but, what then would be these types of circumstances?

A tree naturally wants to grow tall, with a straight trunk. It is duress, that makes them grow this way...
So, what up then with the nice fluffy, billowing clouds of shimpaku foliage? These types of trees that grow in such an
environment don't have this... This is as un-natural as it gets! Their foliage is very coarse and very wispy, as well as sparse.
Same goes with the Michelin Man Pines. Not a nice beautiful head of foliage?

 

[Dorian Fourie]

Okay. I wired the branch (No groove). I decided to use Copper wire as I feel it will work better then Aluminium. I tried to not make it look like a candy cane. So some tight turns and then longer turns.

I also removed all of the growth at the top so that all energy will in future move to the cascade. Now to leave it over Autumn and Winter before I re-pot it into a better medium and then fertilise the hell out of it for growth.

Hopefully in a few years down the line when it has bitten in very nicely, it can be removed and the shari will look respectable. Only then will I look at putting more movement into the trunk to create better looking literati cascade.