American Hornbeam #1 Progression, Caleb C.

[rockm]

Carved the chop today. Just used my hand tools. Branch splitter proved very useful, couldn't have done it with just knob cutters. They call it ironwood for a reason

Tried to give the leader as much breathing room as I could, while trying to prevent the callus from rolling over and bulging too much. Each cut was a tough call, don't wanna kill that leader and ruin this tree completely, but don't wanna leave too much and realize I have to restart in 3 years. Lemme know what you guys think. It's one of my first time's carving a chop, and since the leader is off to the side it was a little weirder than I thought it would be.

Should I carve it more and "hollow" it out? It's relatively flat actually, just curves on the edges, picture is kind of misleading.

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You should hollow it out a bit. You're going to get rolling callus over which will possibly produce inverse taper. Additionally, there will be NO buds in that callus tissue. If you want branching at the site, you're going to have to thread graft or approach graft with thinner branches near or below the scar that can reach across or through the scar. At this point you don't have any twig candidates to work with. Might keep this in mind this growing season...

 

[TN_Jim]

@rockm, do you think chopping the leader prior to leaf/bud break would increase likelihood of backbudding on the trunk?

 

[Caleb Campbell]

@rockm, do you think chopping the leader prior to leaf/bud break would increase likelihood of backbudding on the trunk?

Yes probably, but for now I don't care, just leaving the leader alone so it'll thicken as fast as possible. I'll have plenty of branches to select along the way once after I begin chopping the leader successively

 

[Caleb Campbell]

You should hollow it out a bit. You're going to get rolling callus over which will possibly produce inverse taper. Additionally, there will be NO buds in that callus tissue. If you want branching at the site, you're going to have to thread graft or approach graft with thinner branches near or below the scar that can reach across or through the scar. At this point you don't have any twig candidates to work with. Might keep this in mind this growing season...

I hollowed it out as much as I felt I could without biting into the leader, don't want to risk killing it. But this is the first time I've ever carved. Also it was very difficult with hand tools, knob cutters don't really cut very concave with wood this strong. So all the way down it was fairly convex. It is flatter than it looks in the picture though, I may carve some more but I have plenty of time. May buy a die grinder. I admit that I'm scared to though