First grafting attempts - Practice Lemon

Hey Jay,

Here’s a pawpaw I did. I haven’t been doing them many years. I don’t know what’s going on with callus, black-colored. It bewilders me.

This photo of mine shows a bright green dot above a big bud (vegetative) bud for the next season’s growth. Each scar/bud scar on woody plants to my knowledge typically has “hidden” buds under the scar that will grow aka ‘push’ although not-visible to the eyes of humans.

It looks exactly like your graft. I knitted my graft on a callusing pipe.

Dax

1 Like

That looks nice! I really like the idea of the hot callus pipe. I don’t think one’s in the budget, but I may try to fake it with a heat mat. At the very least, I’ll be making sure it’s warm enough for the species that need the heat (apricot, peach, persimmon) before I try them. I’m doing few enough that I can park them in my warm, sunny dining room, or even bring them in to work (steady 72°), while they callus. Hopefully I’ll be doing pawpaws in a couple years; we’ll see how my seeds do.

Just practiced cuts yesterday on a pile of apple and oak twigs. Slope cuts are getting more consistent, starting to understand how the tongue works better. Still needs a little work though. I also tried a long butt section of a fig stick before I trimmed it off. Fig wood cuts nicely, had it perfectly flat on a 1/2" diameter piece. Getting there.

4 Likes

Think of the tongue cut this way. While executing it, think that someone is pressing down on your hand but you have your arm and hand muscles so tight that they wouldn’t be able to move your hand whatsoever.

That’s how my body feels while I’m making the tongue whether I’m going a human hair per second or doing the entire cut in a timely manner. Remember, your arm and hand is stff as a board while you execute a tongue. My arm and hand stays “tight” while I push**_ forcefully thru wood, too.

Later in life when you’re doing bark grafts and have 1/2" wood to yank a knife thru you’ll see that you’re using both hands and one is not simply to hold the scion; I pull the wood and the knife in opposite directions hoping to stay along a grain I find on an angled plain pulling my knife thru for flat and very long cut.

There are times all the time working with little wood where my hand is completely wrapped around the knife blade and pinky tucked against he area between the blade and handle that’s not the knife edge but is still “steel.” I’ve got three or four fingers gripped tightly around a blade sharp enough to shave my face adding water and shaving cream.

This all comes natural to me I should disclose. I don’t think twice about grabbing my knife off the table soley by the blade along and shifting it around in my hand(s) to grip-firmly the blade-only. I see my buddy having no fear whatsoever too and every now and then the two of us may/may not nick ourselves but it’s nothing but mild. Every now and then we cut ourselves deep, too. Grab bandaids/electrical tape and get back to going.

Again, I hope this helps many.

Dax

2 Likes

Thanks for the description! That sounds like about what I’m doing, but I will reassess during my next session and may make some tweaks. I feel like you need to strap a GoPro to your chest while you do this.So when does your book come out? You’ve probably got enough novel material to write one.

So, you describe going with the grain, but I’ve been thinking of the tongue as a cut across the grain to generate a flap that’s not quite parallel with the initial cut. Is that correct? I seem to end up splitting the stick a little ways down half the time. Maybe I’m worrying about that too much?

And I think I’ve mostly got the main whip cut down. When I take my time to set up each cut and think about what I’m doing (and commit to the cut without hesitating once I start), I get a nice flat cut almost every time. If I’m not properly set up, then it’s usually mostly right. Most of them are probably even good enough, but I’m going for as close to perfect as possible. I just need to do it right enough times in a row to get it into muscle memory. As my college ceramics instructor said, practice makes permanent, so I want to make sure I’m practicing it correctly!

I’ll comment again, but “you find your grain”. It was a complicated thought.

That means, you pull that knife on a flat plane. It means nothing else.

1 Like

If the stick is splitting I see two scenarios. One the wood isn’t old or isn’t tough enough/dense to allow for a razor-straight-cut, or, 2) (a) knife blade is dull.

1 Like

your knife isn’t sharp enough, Jay.

The sole reason I do that 1/4" or less wedge cut is because my whip has a bottom to it that it’s flat. It’s flat until the last wherever I recognize it went off course so I bring the wedge cut out and cut it to a point where it meets " flat ." That’s the whole trick. Then you’re setting flat “everywhere.”

Hope this helps a lot.

Dax

1 Like

You’re probably right. It was definitely losing its edge by the end of my session, and I resharpened it afterwards on my hard Arkansas stone. That brings it to a mirror polish, shaving sharp edge. I have yet to try it again, but I’ll see how it does. I do know that the steel in the knife I converted doesn’t hold up to the single bevel very well, so I may reconsider my aversion to a new purchase… On the other hand, it resharpens very quickly, and I’m doing way more practice cuts than what I will actually end up doing come grafting time. It may also be time to get that stropping compound I’ve been eyeing… I try not to blame my tools too much, but I do recognize that the right tool can make a real difference. Fortunately, I still have about 10 weeks to figure this all out.

Also, it does depend on the wood, for sure. I had fewer problems with the apple than the oak, and the fig wood was almost like butter, no problems whatsoever.

Keep it up.

1 Like

@Barkslip, you were 100% correct about the sharpness of the blade. Finally got around to another practice session since resharpening, with some walnut twigs to 3/4", and the tongue cuts happen super easy every time. Thanks!

Now it’s just down to fine tuning.

3 Likes

I’m super-impressed, Jay.!

The tongue should be cut placed 1/3 of the way down from the top of the cut. It’s a perfectly straight line and not one that veers off either direction.

I learned something myself yesterday. The reason I wasn’t getting a perfectly flat cut and was making “wedge” on the backside to compensate was because I wasn’t using a heavy enough knife. Once I got out my BIG Schatt & Morgan Cotton Sampler, I make perfectly flat cuts on walnut wood, also. I also pushed that giant blade down with no strength necessary to make the tongue. I decided it _was still very beneficial - to nip back that wedge but only a few millimeters worth.

I’m extremely impressed.

What your next-step is to learn to rotate the scion in your hand after you have your cuts put together (pinching) until you find that sweet spot where because you have your fingers at the exact right spot you will be able to press on the bud strip as you go so that the “flaps” all press together flat.

Flaps are any parts (cuts from a knife) of the union that need to come together to create a tight union. When the flaps are not pressed together tightly, the graft union will have gaps in it that are visible to the eye or if put up to a light or toward sunlight you can see spaces where light gets thru. So that’s what flaps are. You get flaps from any style: cleft, veneer, whip and tongue, whatever… because you’ve turned a stick of wood into “cuts.” The only method I can think of where a flap wouldn’t be involved is a whip graft. Technically though you’re putting to flat areas together on a whip graft.

Anyhow. nut wood not only grows zigzag as it (grows) upward , it twists. So you have to pay very special attention to the future of your cut. And on nut tree wood/scionwood - you will begin most of your cuts directly above a bud as to finish your cut near the next scar/ bud below it.

Then you learn to wrap. And with walnuts you learn that you must without exception during each half wrap with the bud strip (you’re going around a stick - so “half around” is what I’m speaking of) you press the bud strip with your finger as you came around from the other side so/as to press the flap up against the rootstock; then you continue 1/2-way around to the other side of the union/working area and press again with one of your fingers and you continue-continue-continue.

Dax
P.s. you’ll need 8" x 3/8ths inch x .020 bud strips for walnuts and anything 3/8ths caliper. Otherwise I recommend “Flexiband” from Oesco. You need to have both, always.

1 Like

I don’t know if you have already covered this in an earlier post because while I did read some of them, I didn’t read all of them, but have you consider taking a grafting class? I signed up for one next month not too far from where I live. It was only 20 dollars. It will be hands on and I will leave with no less than 2 grafted fruit trees (more if I want to buy more rootstock). In my (humble) opinion it’s a lot easier to learn something with an expert standing right next to you to tell you what you might be about to do wrong. Just a thought… :slight_smile:

4 Likes

@Barkslip Thanks for the vote of confidence! As usual, lots of great info in that response; I’ll have to take my time and digest that. I also made myself a strop last night and have some stropping compound on the way, so these cuts should be even nicer and easier next time.

@FarmGirl-Z6A I thought about a workshop, but all the ones I can find in my region are either too expensive, too far away, or both. What I’m doing now suits my learning style well anyway: read extensively in books and on internet to understand the theory, try it out, do post-mortems on mistakes (the mistakes are key), get feedback from more experienced persons (such as all the lovely folks here), and keep trying and making adjustments. I also like to work on one piece at a time, so I better understand how the building blocks go together. I do better with this than trying to learn it all at once under expert guidance. It’s how I learned to code, tie flies, bake better bread, brew beer, sharpen knives, and now I seem to be getting there with grafting.

2 Likes

Cool! I learn a lot by trial and error as well. :slight_smile: Keep on keeping on. :slight_smile:

1 Like

As Dax has said ,a properly sharpened knife will make a huge difference .should be easily able to shave with it.
Ultimately ,grafting is something we do on our own.
Perfecting our own techniques , knife skills , methods , etc.
But…
Spending a hour with a experienced grafter …
Is priceless !

3 Likes

True. That being said, I don’t think I’d have been ready to pick up on what they had to offer before I started this. Now, I maybe have enough of a foundation to understand expert advice.

3 Likes

Why, you offering an hour of your time? :wink:

1 Like

Absolutely .!
Come visit

3 Likes

last year was the 1st time i got my grafts to take. 4 pear scions on a mtn. ash. been trying grafting for 3 years prior but i didn’t practice like you’re doing Jay. probably should of . would have saved me some time. i have some more pear scions and apple scions coming in may to add more to the mtn ash and my 2 apple trees…

2 Likes