Hollowing The Heartwood
I used a combination of hand tools and power tools to "hollow out" the heartwood.
The power tools are a 6mm, a 8mm drill bits (Victorian made), a keyhole router bit and my Black and Decker (English made) power drill.
This is the router bit:
16J7001 3/8" Carbide Keyhole Bit-1/4 shank
This is the English made coping saw:
This is the Japanese keyhole saw:
I used the 6mm drill bit to drill holes right on the center of the trunk. 6mm diameter is too small for the keyhole saw, I used the coping saw to cut an openning -- we can actually removed the blade by taking off the handle, I slipped the blade via one of the holes, then put the handle on. One of the good feature of the coping saw is we can rotate the blade 360 degrees. After making the opening enough for the height of the keyhole saw, I used the keyhole saw all the way through.
The shank of the router bit is around 6mm, so the width of the cutting need to be around 6mm as well -- (so that the router bit could move along the cutting.)
The head of the router bit is around 8mm, so I used the 8mm drill bit to make a single hole -- from then one I used the router bit exclusively to hollow as much as possible the wood inside:
I inserted an aluminium bar of 11mm wide, around 1.5mm thick right in the middle of
the openning, and two 3mm shaping wires on either sides:
I then sealed it up with raffia. Then on the side of the trunk that will be facing the ground, I ran the remainder of the aluminium bar along it, from the soil surface all the way up to the top, I used nylon cable ties to fix the aluminium bar in place. On the opposite side, I ran a 5mm shaping wire also from the soil surface to the top, I also used nylon cable ties to fix it in place: both the bar and the wire sit right on the raffia.
Not shown in photo, but I used grafting tapes to wrap around the bar the wire. There is only one layer of grafting tape. I then ran two layers of electrical tapes over the whole thing:
The Bending
The foam box gives nothing to support heaving bending. I have an old timber box from a previous pine, luckily the foam box fits right inside the timber. So I planned to use the timber box for bending. I need the foam box to firmly stays in place, learning from Barry (*), I bought set of four Ratchet Tie Downs. The timber box also needs some fixings to provide places to fix wires etc:
The length of the extension is about the same as the length of part where I want to bend.
I did make myself a bending bar, but it proves useless for its purpose: it did not move the trunk a tiny little bit. So I resorted to use two 12.5cm turnbuckles. This is it half way through:
The two wires on tree still on the same point. At this point, I moved one wire out toward the tip, making them about 10cm apart, and continue the bending. This is the final position:
-- Using the turnbuckles require to strength at all. And it required alternate adjustments, during this periods, the wood can rest a little.
It still has one turnbuckle on it. And it is still sitting inside the carport. I have not worked out how to move it out yet. It is too heavy for me alone.
The left photo above, I put two old water pipes to prevent it from breaking up. I also put some wooden pieces on top of the soil to prevent the root ball from being lifted up during the bending.
The right photo shows where most of the bend took place: at the very bottom, I think there were some breakages on the trunk. But I did not hear any breaking sound.
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I hope the entire tree survives the operation. Otherwise, I still have the trunk left.
I plan to repot it in the middle of August/2011. I am not sure how to go about it yet.
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(*) Please see:
Black pine bend
I will do it some times in the future.
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