I have taken some pictures recently of a two of my mame trees in training. I tend to focus more on mame & shohin trees rather than the larger trees that many of my friends have in their collections. The first tree is a seiju elm I got from my friend Neil at Broken Arrow Bonsai. I built Neil a large stand for his large root over rock trident maple and this tree was one of 3 trees he sent to me as a thank you for the work I did. Neil has a great selection of seiju & cork bark elms in his collection and many of them are for sale. This tree stands about 4.5” tall and is quickly filing out. Next spring I will be cutting this tree back hard again to develop only a few primary branches. By eliminating everything else, the tree can focus its energy on those primary branches rather than wasting a lot of energy all the shoots it has now. The original “leader” was broken when a large branch from a tree in our yard fell so a new leader will be established and allowed to grow unchecked for the next season or two. This will add a little height to the tree and also aid in healing over one of the larger wounds at the top. The first picture was taken March 18th 2009 and the second picture was taken August 25th 2009.
The next tree is a Ficus Nerifolia. I saw this tree online and fell in love with the base, taper & height of the tree. The tree was delivered to my house July 15th and I quickly went to work on it. We were having wonderful weather and I knew if I cut it back and wired it, the tree would respond with loads of new growth. I cut about 4” off the top of the tree, wired the branches I wanted to keep and cut everything else off. I cut the remaining branches back and in just under a months’ time the tree has pushed out all new leaves. The branches will be allowed to grow for the rest of the year and cut back aggressively again next spring. The leader will be allowed to grow untouched for at least another two seasons to help heal the scar from removing the top. Once the scar has healed the leader will be cut back hard again. More projects will be added soon, I am in the process of finishing a large wine rack that I am building as a wedding present for a few good friends of ours. I will also be posting a photo-series covering the complete construction of a new shohin stand I am building as well as a few new burl slabs I have started working on.

~Jay

Welcome.

Being that this is my first post I thought I would give a brief overview of what I do and post a few pictures of some of my most recent projects. I am a part time wood working and bonsai hobbiest. My hope is to post information & pictures of my projects as they are completed along with other topics mostly focusing on either bonsai trees or woodworking. I generally focus my woodworking on building custom display tables for bonsai trees but I have a number of other projects I am currently working on.

I was recently commissioned to build a few custom display stands for a few trees that my good friend and bonsai teacher Matt O. was entering in the Midwest Bonsai show that ran August 14th thru the 16th. The trees pictured below are not my trees, I only built the stands shown. The first picture is of the largest stand I have built so far. It measures 29” wide by 26” deep & stands 9” tall and was built for a truly amazing Kaede (Trident Maple). The construction of this table was fairly simple, the top frame is tongue and groove with biscuited triple miter corners that join the frame pieces with the legs. The top panel was made from 4 pieces of walnut that were book-matched and glued together with biscuits. The stretchers are joined by hand cut mortise & tenon joints directly into the legs. The doweling was the hardest & most time consuming part of the build. Since the dowels do not pass completely thru the stretchers, to keep the lines of the table clean, the pattern needed to be laid out exactly on each stretcher to match the pattern in the bottom of the frame. This ensured that all the dowels would be evenly spaced and true. The table was made from walnut and finished with 4 coats of poly. I would have preferred to see the finish a little darker but my client wanted a natural tone that showed the grain of the walnut.

Next is a smaller stand for his shohin Zelkova (Elm). This is one of my favorite trees in his collection and I was really excited to build this stand. This was made from the same walnut as the larger stand above and finished the same way. The construction of this stand was fairly easy as well but needed a lot more shaping in the legs and stretchers. These pieces were cut on a band saw and shaped with an orbital sanding bit in my drill press. The stretchers were again joined to the legs with mortise & tenon joints. These joints were much smaller and needed to be aligned perfectly. With something this small being off by even 1/32” really stands out.

The last picture is of a table I called my prototype, I was experimenting with the design when my client saw it. He really liked the way it complimented the lines of his chuhin Kaede (Trident Maple) but felt the original height was too tall. We decided to shorten the legs of this table to 3” from the original 7” and we were both very happy with the outcome. The top frame is a tongue & groove frame and panel design with small splines added to the corner joints. The mitered corners are joined with biscuits so these splines don’t add to the structure of the table but were added more for aesthetics. The lower frame features triple miter joinery with hand shaped legs to give it a more feminine/delicate feel that matched the feel of his tree. The top is joined to the lower frame with 1/8” dowels stained to match. This table is finished with 3 coats of walnut stain and finished with wipe on poly.That’s it for the my first post but stay tuned, there are many more projects in the works that will be added soon!

~ Jay