First Conifer, a Black Hills Spruce...hoping to imitate full sized tree

[boss99er]

Hey, I just picked up this Black Hills (White) Spruce yesterday. I grabbed it because of it's strong trunk base. I'm hoping to imitate this tree that I found near my in-laws home in South East Nebraska (see last image). With that in mind, what work should I start to do on this tree. It's my first conifer, so I'm someone unfamiliar but watching lots of videos and gaining some good knowledge.

Due to the top heavy nature of the actual tree I'm emulating, I'm not so concerned with developing a ton of length in the lower branches. I need the top to continue to grow in length though. Should I leave the "fuzzy eggs" if I hope to get more length? I'm having trouble finding clarification on when/why to pinch those.

Any other advice/direction on what to do for now would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[boss99er]

Did some thinning on the tree. I think I did a pretty good job keeping material I’ll want down the road. I got rid of a LOT of dead/wimpy inner branches. Also cleaned up some of the whorls. Those still need work, but a top chop to eliminate the top one might be in the books for down the road. For now, I’ll just leave it alone to recover.

Before and after:

 

[Adamski77]

Thinning good… you’ll need to keep thinking about all these bar branches though. Photo not great but can see at least 3 instances of that… and you’ll need to remove one of the two at some point of time. First step done… let the tree go and see what it gives you.

 

[boss99er]

Thinning good… you’ll need to keep thinking about all these bar branches though. Photo not great but can see at least 3 instances of that… and you’ll need to remove one of the two at some point of time. First step done… let the tree go and see what it gives you.

Yep, for sure. There are more than 3 if ya look closer. Probably close to 6 or 7. I wasn’t ready to make decisions on which branches to keep yet though. This was just a thinning to let the sun in and be able to see things better. I think that top is going to have to go eventually, but not yet. It’s for a pretty funky whorl that causes some pretty extensive inverse taper.