Aging deadwood with winter in a can

tony wrote:

marcus watts wrote: anyone got golf clubs for sale

Found the perfect one for you Marcus Here

You must be a rich guy!

haha, brilliant Tony well found...I was expecting a huge loss of interest is Golf in the USA..............normally people bad at fishing take up golf but I think there may be a huge uptake in fishing soon....

Hi Yvonne, not a strange answer. Like all new methods it it a case of 'buyer beware' as i cant allow for, or comment on, the results that may be obtained by others. The care they take, or even their clumsiness will effect the results after all. I use it on the nice visible deadwood areas of my best juniper (needle & scale) bonsai and will use it on the yew and common juniper when the time is right. None of my other trees suit aged cracked wood.

How will a broad leaf react? You need to thing logically I guess, do they react differently to carving, blow torching or even natural winter weathering ? if you do have trees that reacted differently to having the dead bits worked on then I guess blast freezing could also get a similar reaction. I dont have any trees that have reacted at all to having the dead bits worked on so am happy to do any dead work on just about any day of the year. If you have a precious tree play safe the first time...wait till winter, pick a chilly day and just freeze it a bit harder, but i still personally would do my trees on any available day without any worry

cheers Marcus

I have used this technique on dead wood. I work in the glass industry and we use a pressurized nitrogen spray to run a score when making a small circle cut in a mirror. When I first tried this product, I was wanting to mimic the freeze effect that Allen Carver has suffered on ficus nerifolia; which was a crackled, much textured bark which had healed in the cambium layer and started to callus in the cracks-ya with me? Ok, this happened when there was a flash freeze in Jupiter, Fl. and warmed up drastically. So, I have had success in small bursts and failures in more 2-3 seconds blasts. It also helps to use the little straw; like one for wd-40 (for very fine spray).
I told Ed Trout about my new found magnificent discovery, and showed the rusults, to which he replied "please dont ever do that to my trees"...
I then tried it on deadwood, buttonwood, and bald cypress. I would first torch the wood with my pen torch, then wash off the soot, and then freeze the area protecting anything alive. It is a great technique.
Thank you for sharing the picts with us, I enjoy people who think

Ok, I got a couple of cans of the stuff to play around with.

Philip, interesting. I'll have to give that a try on one of my 'trash' tree's bark next spring.

Marcus, do you just not spray near the live wood or actually protect it with something? And about how long does it take to freeze?...does the deadwood turn white with frost? Just trying to get an general idea.
Thanks!

Chris

Fore wrote:Ok, I got a couple of cans of the stuff to play around with.

Philip, interesting. I'll have to give that a try on one of my 'trash' tree's bark next spring.

Marcus, do you just not spray near the live wood or actually protect it with something? And about how long does it take to freeze?...does the deadwood turn white with frost? Just trying to get an general idea.
Thanks!

Chris

Hi Chris,
my cans came with a straw attachment so the spray was very accurate. I shield the nearby foliage with cardboard sheets as it is a good insulator from the cold, but i do not shield or protect the live veins as i was not working right up to the edges.

my best results came when using a scalpel to open up a few cracks in the deadwood and saturating the area in water fully, letting the wood become soaked. the spray works best with very short bursts, freezing takes seconds and you can see the ice form if you had the wood wet enough, on dryer wood you see white frost within seconds, but the ice is the key to getting lots of natural cracks.

the wood is visibly frozen solid within 10-15 seconds of short bursts - holding the button down looses control and the frozen area spreads out too fast.

once the wood fully dries it shrinks and the cracks open up - i like working on hot days as you can get several treatments into one day, but a hair drryer would dry and shrink the wood pretty well. Once dry re-saturate with water and refreeze.

i save the method for the most visible and important areas of deadwood

have fun with it -

Marcus

Excellent, Thanks for the details! I was thinking that using a blow torch as an alternative to the blow drier would yield very good results too. This is just a fun technique I can't wait to try, so Thanks again for posting this technique Marcus.

Fore wrote:Excellent, Thanks for the details! I was thinking that using a blow torch as an alternative to the blow drier would yield very good results too. This is just a fun technique I can't wait to try, so Thanks again for posting this technique Marcus.

go carefull, a blow torch i find softens edges as it burns away the very thinnest wood - it is excelent for removing signs of work, little rough edges from carving etc, but it will probably burn away the edges of the clearly defined cracks that we are trying to make with the ice. Up until now i try to work on sunny days so the wood dries and starts to shrink naturally.

have fun with it though, it is another usefull string to our bonsai bow

Marcus, that's a very good point! I'll stash them away till next June

<another usefull string to our bonsai bow >

Well said! My 'bonsai shelving' started with tons of room, but now is nearing capacity lol Tons of bows, strings, arrows...

another thread mentioned this thread, so i thought i would bump it up in the queue...

good sounding technique !

marcus watts wrote: it is another usefull string to our bonsai bow  

btw - i think the saying might be "another arrow in our quiver"... ?

good technique. I will try it.

How is the tree doing today ?

kind regards Yvonne

marcus watts wrote:

Fore wrote:Excellent, Thanks for the details!  I was thinking that using a blow torch as an alternative to the blow drier would yield very good results too.  This is just a fun technique I can't wait to try, so Thanks again for posting this technique Marcus.

go carefull, a blow torch i find softens edges as it burns away the very thinnest wood - it is excelent for removing signs of work, little rough edges from carving etc, but it will probably burn away the edges of the clearly defined cracks that we are trying to make with the ice. Up until now i try to work on sunny days so the wood dries and starts to shrink naturally.

have fun with it though, it is another usefull string to our bonsai bow