Stumbled upon and reviving this great thread, as I have a similar, but less aggressive, project (How do I train/prune this apple to a weep), where I eventually plan to graft over this not-so-good apple. @alan I am trying to understand a bit more about the sun scalding and progression of removing the vertical uprights and avoiding scalding. Probably 70% of my uprights were removed a year ago and of course last summer a bunch of small ones formed in their place.
Is it a progression of removing up to 80% of the shading limbs each year, until there are none (and the tree adjusts to be OK without shade), or there really always needs to be some (say 20%) verticality for sun protection of the upper trunk in a weeping structure?
I have looked all over to find pictures of what I’m trying to target for a weeping apple, but without success. If you could be talked into sharing a picture or two of what your old apple trees re-worked look like in their final weeping form (or along the way), it would be very, very enlightening!
BTW - found a copy of that book for about $20 on Amazon and snapped it up so I can check out that chapter!