Opinions on an Amur Maple being auctioned

[Bolero]

Thanks Walter, I will do the entire trunk hollow only if I am not satisfied with the partial hollow look....

 

[BobbyLane]

Thanks Walter, I will do the entire trunk hollow only if I am not satisfied with the partial hollow look....

i wouldnt go into any green though, you dont want to interrupt too much sap flow. i would just go as far as the wood is rotten, hold off when the heartwood appears white. you only need a dremel, with small drill attachment for this and a rotary wire brush.
maybe you can hollow deeper, but i would be mindful you dont cut off too much flow from the roots. so you need to look at the tree properly and decide which roots are feeding what areas and dont compromise them further if you see what i mean.

 

[wireme]

My plans for the Amur Maple are to leave the smooth bark side alone for now...The Deadwood side will be Carved as follows, a narrow 1/4 of trunk diameter Carved out area following the Trunk Offshoot from Bottom to the Top of the Trunk with some very minor Carving on the Left side to Highlight a few Anomalies there...
Also I have to somehow encourage foilage on the deadwood side top...
I am considering the Amur Maple a Shohin ….
Comments welcomed...

Amurs do have a tendency for course growth, especially for shohin.

To overcome this I try to prune further out than the intended future pruning sites initially. Just enough to hopefully trigger the buds and let them grow with shorter internodes inside the canopy. Even if It’s a sacrifice branch/leader I still try to set it up with short nodes first before letting it run. Dirk also does something like this as does Paul who calls it internode sinks. Results have varied for me, I think I need to figure out timing more for the method to be more predictable. Sometimes it takes longer than I would like to trigger the buds.

 

[Bolero]

Here is some further work I've done on my Amur Maple, some minor wiring to bring some foilage to the front & some minor carving....