Augustine,
This tree was developed under the teaching of Boon, my teacher in the Bay Area. I wanted to "build", or finish a pine under his direction in a reasonable time frame. I brought this to his attention, and he directed me to several trees for sale. He suggested I could make a finished tree from my favorite in 5 years. I didn't quite believe him, because it looked quite rough. He suggested the trunk was there, with the needed taper, and had usable branches in reasonable position.
So we started from what you see in the first picture. I was instructed to clean up the first trunk chop, and set the first several branches. I was told not to remove too many needles on these branches. We candle cut each season, began setting upper branches, let a sacrifice run at the top to thicken the last segment of trunk. The branches back budded relatively easily (because they were young, and still had needles), which contributed to filling out the pads. The last sacrifice branch was cut in the second to last picture, and all branches wired. Needles plucked to balance strength, and tree let to grow out. There was a season between the 5th and 6th pictures that the tree grew well, density increased with candle cutting and tree was ready for last styling. With balancing growth and candle cutting, needle size came down considerably and density grew to what you see in last picture. It all went faster and better than I would have anticipated.
What I learned from this exercise, is developing the branches is relatively fast. The time invested in this tree was 20 plus years on trunk and nebari, that was the time consumptive part. Branches come last.
