Breaking New Ground with an Old Tree – Part 1 Sandro Segneri
I have a very interesting uh project to show you and this youtube video is going to be slightly different because i’m going to show you uh pictures that were taken in 2008 which is 12 and half years ago to be precise this project was carried out in july of 2008 and it is very very interesting so that is me i haven’t changed that much i’m not wearing my hawaiian shirt and you must be wondering what i’m doing with these two large junipers the juniper on the right hand side of the picture is one of my large juniper chanenses gray owl and the one on the left is a san jose juniper it may not look that big but if i take the camera a bit closer you will see how thick the trunk is that is the base of the tree and that trunk is about i would say 10 to 12 inches in diameter it’s a rather gangly and strange looking tree it’s not a collected tree it’s a tree that i got from a local nursery where i buy a lot of my junipers from and he had these stock plants where he used to take cuttings from it and it had become so old that all the branches were bare and he didn’t want it anymore so he gave it to me at a small fee and i dug it up and brought it back to the nursery and it was grown in some large containers for about four or five years and i was always wondering what to do with it because it was a very difficult tree so when i got the opportunity i will show you what we did so bear with me and i will show you what happens so let’s make a start you must be wondering who this gentleman is and in case you do not know him he is an italian bonsai master and his name is sandro senieri he came to me in july 2008 to do some workshops for some of my regular students back in the early days when i started the nursery i used to run a lot of classes and to make the programs more interesting i used to invite different teachers to come to the nursery so that our regular students could learn and see a different method of working so i invited sandro over from italy and he came over at great expense and he conducted a two-day workshop on the uh i think it was the 12th and 13th of july 2008 and we had about eight or ten observers or participants in this workshop so this is the tree that he started working on you saw the tree before we did the work but by the time i started bringing my camera into operation he had already cut a few branches off so this great big juniper he had already removed i will show you with my finger here he had removed this one one two three four five he had already removed five branches from this tree to reveal the trunk this tree was taken out of the flower pot as you can see and placed in this temporary mica pot and these are the branches that he had cut off so they are quite thick branches have a look and these were cut off from that tree you will recognize that this is still the same back greenhouse where i presently do my youtube videos nothing has changed much and here is cutting some more stuff off and using the japanese sauce he is cutting away and this is a very large branch that he cut off look at that that is some branch so you took that branch off removing that branch i think that branch must have been almost half the tree and there it is discarded on the floor so after removing about seven branches we are down to the thick trunk and some very thick branches normally when one makes bonsai with old material we like to have thin branches which are usable but in this case there are hardly any thin branches to use so more branches are being cut and some more seeing him cut away can be quite frightening what will be left you wonder and some more partly cut and tearing to make the gins this is standard method of making gins but some of them were just straight cuts with the saw not all of them were torn you can almost imagine him hacking away and wrenching the tree apart so although there is no sound and these are just still photographs it gives you some ideas to the magnitude of the work there’s a lot of work involved in here and the other side where you can’t see the cuts this is what the trunk looks like from this side and then he proceeded to use one of his steel chisels and a heavy club hammer to split some of the cut pieces to make the gins i like the color of the inside of the branches these junipers have this lovely pink or deep red color so the red color that you normally find on the bark of junipers is also in the inside of the inside of the wood pretty i can’t count the rings because the magnification is not thick enough so this is where we’ve got to he’s cut these thick thick branches off to reveal the inside of the wood that lovely red color blending with the cream color and we will see what he does with it eventually so let’s move on and see what he proceeds to do next so let me take you through the work involved you notice that there’s this strange looking great big branch here like like a hairpin there and it comes out from the trunk and this is the branch that he is going to keep and you wonder what he’s going to do with that it’s really intriguing i’ll leave you to guess but when i show you what he’s done you are in for a big surprise so let’s move the pictures on you see how these big branches bend over like that big curvy branches these are the branches he’s now going to use now the next picture he’s already started work that big curly branch have a close look at what he’s doing he’s using a router one of these great big makita routers and it’s a die grinder i’m sorry and he’s carving out the center of the wood of these thick branches these branches must be every bit two inches thick two inches is what uh about five centimeter thick and he’s carving the inside out like a channel you know like hollowing out the canoe you know the dugout canoes which uh native uh people use for uh river work so it’s almost like a dugout so all that remains is the bark of the tree so he did this throughout the length of this curvy branch just show you some of the tools he uses these are the bronze splitters when cutter hammer chisels and he’s continuing his work carving it out and see the amount of dust and the sawdust and the wood chipping that is coming out he’s using a full face mask chainsaw helmet ear defenders and he’s carving away to get the inside of the wood completely hollowed out so that this branch is going to be like a complete hollow a youtube for want of a better expression pardon the pun so showing you some more detail on what he’s doing that is what he’s doing you can almost hear the sound of that machine carving away this is a another angle of the same shot wearing the chainsaw helmet and another close-up of what he’s been doing carving completely hollowing out the inside of that thick branch so even the branches have the variation in color the pinky red and the yellow of junipers which is typical of juniper so this is the hollowing process right through this must have taken a good part of two hours i would say so after he’d done that he played around and done some shari here whole place was covered in sawdust so although this is not a live video i hope you get a sense of the work that is involved in the carving here he is just using the makita die grinder to do some shari work and some more work cutting and carving away to hollow out that trunk i’m in the branch a lot of spectators around and here’s you’re doing the shari carving of the shari and some gins and horroring out the trunk he smokes cigars so you’re wondering what he’s doing he’s having a puff of a cigar now with the hammer and chisel he’s trying to split some of the little stubs of the branches and with hand chisels he’s refining some of the gins that he has made can you see the gin is there so this detail here gives you some ideas to the work that he’s done he has cleaned the bark of the lower portions of the trunk he’s made some gins as you can see there and he’s hollowed out that great big side branch completely hollowed out so he’s removed i would say more than three quarters of the wood from inside that thick branch and it’s like a great big dugout canoe with a light curve there now the next stage you must be wondering what’s happening here he’s taken some very heavy aluminium wire i think this must have been 10 or 12 millimeter aluminium wire and he’s placing these aluminium wires inside the trunk to reinforce the inside you can see that one piece of wire has been used so far to fit inside the curve i think he’s just trying it for size so that wire has been put inside the hollowed-out branch and once he’s measured it he takes the wire out again and then he takes two and i think it was three pieces of wire to put inside this hollowed-out branch look at that carving which has been done so it’s completely hollowed out so yes it was i think just two pieces hard to tell whether it’s two or three no it’s three there you are it’s three pieces of wire three pieces of 12 millimeter wire and he’s wrapping it together with raphia to bulk it up and once raphael has been wrapped around the wire that whole armature if i can call it that has been inserted into the hollowed-out portion now those of you who are engineers i used to be an electrical engineer and i have attended great big factories where they make these heavy industrial mortars and the insulation that is put on these heavy coils of wire for big motors is done exactly like this you wrap insulating tape on it and you dip it into a insulation lacquer or something like that and then these coils are the coils that drive the motor they cause the magnetic field so this was almost like an electrical engineering product the closest thing i’ve ever come to doing electrical engineering is seeing this happen so those three coils of wire wrapped with hessian was inserted into that hollowed-out branch and fit it snugly into the branch and then we’ll see what he does with it next okay that’s how it’s sitting into the branch it’s going to be pushed into the horror there’s some detail there and some more detail there so to secure it he’s used a duct tape so that is duct tape used to hold the hessian and aluminum wire in place and now you must be wondering what’s happening here in case you wonder what that is this is an inner tube of a bicycle because i do a lot of cycle racing he asked me to sacrifice the inner tube of my very expensive uh bianchi bike and we took out the inner tube and that’s the inner tube and he proceeded to cut it apart what a waste the yaw is cutting the inner tube and with the inner tube he’s slicing it and all he wanted was pieces of rubber and we see what he’s doing with the piece of rubber the inner tube of my expensive cycle and with that rubber he’s using it to wrap around that thick branch so that it holds that aluminium reinforcing thing you may jig in place i think he’s used rubber so that it can move and expand as the tree grows no other reason if you had tied it with wire it wouldn’t have been so successful so he’s you can see how the tube has been used he’s used it to wrap it around and then after he’s wrapped it around he now uses copper wire this again is 10 millimeter thick copper wire and that is a pretty uh daunting task using a copper wire 10 millimeter take two coils of it wrap around that reinforced branch wrapped over the rubber of the inner cycle tube and he’s now going to bend the whole branch he’s going to bend the branch more so that part has been covered with the rubber tube and you can see that is the part he’s going to bend that portion there is going to be carved not carved the carp portion has been filled with the reinforcing bars and the exterior has been wired up with copper wire and now he’s going to bend that portion so in order to bend it he’s standing up on high and he’s using iron bars for leverage to bend that thick branch so you can see him bending that branch with the iron bars a real difficult daunting task you can almost hear the branch creaking and groaning pity i didn’t do a video of it but i think these pictures can give you a sense of what is going on it is really difficult work so you can see he’s got some helpers helping him and this is the bending process this bending process must have taken at least half an hour it’s still bending see the leverage he’s got with that great big iron bar he’s trying to bend it into a hairpin so that the branch doubles back on itself now you can see using that reinforced reinforcing iron bar double iron bar he has bent that branch literally like a paper clip complete hairpin bend and that is what the reinforcing bars inside and the supporting wires outside has helped to position that bend in place look at that severe bend almost unimaginable incredible to do such a thing i’ve never seen that done before and i’ve never seen it done since he’s still trying to get more bend in it so there were lots of people helping him bend it the wall standing on top of that worktop took a lot of man effort to bend that thick branch and he’s still bending it and trying to position it in place that iron bar was kept in place throughout the life of that tree that anbar was never removed it was always there just to hold that branch in place so that it wouldn’t escape so that is the u-bend that he did the paper clip bent hairpin bend call it what you like but it certainly did the trick so that’s another view of that branch from the base of the tree so let me show you this shot so the bottom of the branch you can see there this was bent but that was not all he did a double bend that was the second bend there so it was literally literally like a paperclip one bend here another bend there and a third bend there saw there was a triple bend triple bend using that technique and this is where they’re reinforcing the three pieces of 12 millimeter aluminium wire inside the hollowed out branch was able to sustain the tree and the raffia and the rubber tubing wrapped around the branch prevented the thing from splitting so the whole branch was bent three times so let me remind you again what has happened this is a first bend second bender and third bend there so a triple bend was made using that technique so only one branch has been used in the design of this tree and this is what he envisaged the final tree to look like a lot of the other branches would have been made into gins and that one single live branch would produce the structure the life structure for the future oh so there you are the date it was 11th of july sorry not the 12th 11th of july 2008 and this is the drawing he did of what the future of the tree would look like and so let me show you some more shots of him working there’s the triple bend again the other bits are just gins they’re not used at all only one live branch was used for making the spawn soil so although this is not a live video i hope the work i’m doing with these photographs gives you some idea as to what has been done and of course not everyone has this material i’m proud to say that at hands we have scores of trees of this size junipers mainly junipers i think skomata juniper san jose juniper we all have trees with trunks as thick as this and thicker than that i have a tree which has got a i think 18 inch diameter trunk and it’s partly trained i’ll show it to you one day so that single branch still had some thinner branches there and that is what was achieved on the first day there you are the reinforcing bar was used to bend the branch in place and this is how far he got after the first day so he’s blowing away all the sawdust just looking at it now closely and this is the work that was achieved during the first day and at the end of the day he proceeded to use a blow torch to burn away part of the wood so that he could carve a little more this is a standard technique he didn’t use a cigar he used to blow torch you can almost smell the wood burning look at that all the sparks and the wood and light i wonder whether that heat could damage the tree at all we shall see we shall see so the blow torch being used you could almost feel the heat feel the heat so although this is not a video i’m really pleased that this video is working in this way the tree caught a light at one point now the embers starting to form the fire is going out so do not panic so that was the end of the first day’s work so we will go on to the next day so picking up from the previous day this saturday this is what happened on the afternoon of saturday and we will now see what happens the following day these are the embers going out on the previous day and then the next day he stands up on the worktop and starts wiring some of the fine branches on that single branch that was bent double double triple triple bend you see how compact the tree has become that single branch has been used to form the complete superstructure of the tree so there are some fine branches as you can see and these are the branches that are going to be wired this is the easy part really the hard part was done the previous day so wiring the pads these are the fine branches that are wearable the thick branches were used almost like the trunk of the tree so much of the day was spent just wiring the fine branches and then in the evening we celebrated with a dinner there were a lot of people who came and i presented him with a very very large trunk splitter this was a special tool i had bought from japan just the previous year and i presented this massive trunk splitter to him which i hope he still has and so that was the end of a very lovely workshop now for the sake of completeness i will show you a picture of what the tree looked at the very end of the exercise there you are it doesn’t look bad there are quite a lot of branches to make it look credible as a living tree and that was the drawing that he envisaged for the future of the tree with that massive trunk and the hope was that it would survive i will now show you some more pictures because whenever visitors come to our nursery we have some very famous trees near where i live and in a little village called crowhurst there is this four and a half thousand year old you it’s in all the famous tree books of the world and this tree is supposed to be four and a half thousand years old whether that is true or not no one can tell because the inside of this tree is completely hollow so this great big tree i would say it is about 12 foot in diameter and the tree is completely hollow inside so let me just show you some pictures of what this tree looks like there we are together sitting in front of the tree it’s in a church yard and usually the oak the old oaks and the old jews are put in church yards i don’t know whether they were considered sacred but i believe the ewes were kept in church yards because the leaves are poisonous and if yous are grown in a church yard cattle don’t go into the church yard so they don’t eat the leaves and they’re less likely to die how far that tradition is true i don’t know because you will still find new trees growing in the wild and not always in church yards i like to show this tree because it has a lot of natural gins and sherries all created by nature not carved by human hand and look at the texture of that wood i never cease to admire that tree whenever i have a spare moment i usually visit this tree two or three times a year with friends and they all marvel at this beautiful tree look at it it’s completely hollow inside and this is some of the detail of the wood that you find inside you can carve it man cannot carve this this is all natural absolutely natural look at all the detail there all natural completely created by nature and worn by age these are the effects that we try to recreate when we carve in bonsai and of course with all the efforts of man however well he tries to carve i don’t think one can recreate what nature can create it’s on a different level and then i took him to another old you this is also supposed to be 4 000 years old and this is in another village which is three miles away called tan ridge and this is in saint peter’s church i’ve shown videos of these used before and this is that tree this again is like at least 12 or 15 foot in diameter and this tree has got about seven trunks they’re like organ pipes seven massive trunks so this you and the other you is completely different in character then i took him into lingfield village and in this village this is a 600 year old village jail and in the middle ages all the miscreants of the village were kept in this little jail if they were drunk or disorderly they were put in jail and this is outside the jail and look at that trunk of that tree this is a eight or nine hundred year old oak tree and this tree again is completely hollow i’ve shown a picture of this tree in black and white in my book bonsai master class and if you care to look at masterclass and plow through the pages you’ll find a picture of this beautiful old oak tree so where we live there are lots of beautiful things to be seen so with that i will end this part of the video and the next part of the video i’m going to show you how we set about reviving or resuscitating this tree after a period of 12 and a half years mind you these videos were taken in july of 2008 and now we’re looking at the 20th of january 2021 so the next part of the video i will show you what i’m going to do to this tree [Music] you
