I top worked a pear larger than this three springs ago. Here are some things to think about. When you cut off large branches it is hard to keep the wood alive with a few small scions. The nurse branch helps but you h a a huge wound to heal and you may lose an entire limb at some point. When you cut this off it is going to sprout out all over the trunk, these need to be removed constantly. At the time Olpea suggested that instead of cutting it down and grafting to just cut it off and let it branch out then pick the best branches to graft to the following spring. I kind of did both. I cut the tree down to about six feet and rind grafted all of the stumps. I mid summer after the grafts had taken I allowed some of the sprouts on the trunks to live and grow out. The next spring I backed up the rind grafts with whip grafts on the smaller shoots I had saved. I picked a hand full of Asian pears off of it last summer. I have several different varieties on it but it does look like I have some dead wood on some of the big branches. There is a thread on here about it. Grafted pear
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