Black Mulberry styling and carving with `Harry Harrington

Monday morning I visited Harry Harrington again for another training day, and I took this Morus Nigra / Black Mulberry tree to learn about the carving and treatment of deadwood on deciduous trees. The tree had a lot of obvious man made chop marks / stumps, and many stumps of suckers at the base of the trunk. This gave the it a youthful and unnatural look. 

After examining the position of the stumps and any existing callousing, together with the general movement of the tree, Harry decided on the pattern of carving that would be carried out, to make the most of the trees current features, whilst turning the ugly parts into natural looking uros (hollows / holes). He was conscious not to over-do the carving, so as to end up with holes all over! 

After removing some calloused edges with a knife, some uros were carved out and joining up in a manner complimentary to  the movement of the tree.  Various Dremmel and Makita bits were used, then the tree, once finished was painted in the hollows with a black water based paint, to exaggerate this feature.

The tree was then pruned, wired and styled for future branch structure development. Overall a fantastic day!