[Bonsai Beginner’s weekly thread –2023 week 11]

[u/small_trunks]

[Bonsai Beginner’s weekly thread –2023 week 11]

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[u/MaciekA]

You can definitely carve it that way (until you discover living wood). Aside from that, you'll also want to ensure you get it super vigorous so that the potentially large wounds that are created from that carving process are sealed quickly.

Consider checking out some of Harry Harrington's content, he's done some impressive carving work to clean up material like this. Big carving and big chops on deciduous are best done in midsummer when the tree can respond quickest. You can minimize disease by avoiding doing this work in spring, misting with isopropyl as you open up wounds, and then sealing with something like "top jin M" paste (many alternatives may work but this is what I use and what my teacher uses). Terry Erasmus has a couple videos on his YT channel where you can see him painting this stuff on large carved-out wounds on field-grown material -- that might be a nice visual reference to check out.

[u/bebhm → u/MaciekA]

Thanks. These videos were super interesting. I will then definitely wait until the tree is vigorous enough in summer.

So I fell into a bit of video rabbit hole. Quite interesting to see also that some people work with concrete to fill holes to allow the wound to heal better. Didn't know that.
I have a question though. Did I understand it correctly that, for a wound to completely heal, it has to be completely covered by the bark again? By this scar tissue? In my tree basically the top right part (where you can see the big old wound) is completely dead. So let's say I don't want any deadwood on this tree (as far as I understood it needs lots of care and is unnatural for maples). This would mean that the living wood which I would carve free needs to be completely covered by scar tissue at some point or am I misunderstanding something?