Arakawa deadwood???

[Matte91]

Hello,

What would you do with the deadwood on this arakawa?

From my view there are 3 options.

-Carve it out and make a hollow trunk
-Carve it out, seal with cut paste and hope it will heal
-Keep it and give it wood hardener
-?

Thank you.

 

[Paradox]

I'd probably expose the cambium on either side, apply cut paste and try to get it to heal closed. You don't need to do much carving for this because the new cambium need a surface to roll over to heal.

Dead wood on maples tends to rot because it doesn't have the resin that pines and juniper have

 

[Shibui]

All your options are viable. Which you choose will depend on what result you want. Personally I think I'd try to get it to heal over.
The scar is quite narrow so it has a great chance of healing completely provided the dead wood is still solid and that's hard to tell from a photo. Check with a pointed tool. If it is soft and rotting you'll need to remove as much soft rotting wood as possible then treat remaining wood to preserve it until the callus can roll over the space. If the hollow is too deep after removing rotted wood you can fill with epoxy putty or similar to bring it back up to the current wood level and the callus should still roll over the gap. Wound sealer seems to help callus growth so seal over after any treatment.

More growth above always speeds up healing but that depends how well ramified your branches are and whether allowing lots of long growth would unduly thicken the fine branching.

 

[Matte91]

@Shibui
Do you mean I should preserve it with wood hardener?

 

[Shibui]

Do you mean I should preserve it with wood hardener?

If the wood is still solid and hard I use lime sulfur as a preservative. That will kill and prevent any fungi, etc that would rot the wood and can make dead wood last many years while the bark grows.
I have not used wood hardener on bonsai but I see others do use it. Should be good if the wood has already started to go a bit soft. Not sure if it will actually kill fungi and prevent rot or if it just solidifies soft, rotting wood.

 

[Matte91]

@Shibui What about this wound? I removed as much soft wood as possible, exposed the cambium and sealed with cut paste. Do you think its necessary to preserve this?

 

[Shibui]

Hard to tell from this distance but if you really ant it to heal over I would err on the side of caution and treat the exposed wood to make it last longer.
Depending how much growth you can get on the tree it could take 2-5 years or even longer for the cambium to grow over that. Maple wood exposed to the elements tends to start rotting away in 3-4 years here so I paint with lime sulfur and seal over the exposed area.
In my experience sealing cuts does speed up cambium growth so cuts heal quicker if covered.