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New bonsai tweezers

May 27, 2011 by Jonas Dupuich

Many people who work a lot with black pine bonsai develop a special relationship with tweezers. Fall, winter, and sometimes spring and summer offer opportunities to remove copious amounts of needles from pine bonsai in later stages of development. I like tweezer work because it leaves pine foliage looking clean and even – balanced, in a word. I’ve also finished plenty of days’ work with sore fingers.

After a very brief stint with low quality tweezers, I switched to Masakuni tweezers. I like these a lot and have used them for more than 10 years. Recently, however, I began seeing folks using a different kind of tweezers. I was curious, so I picked up a pair from Boon at a BIB workshop.

I couldn’t use them at first as they needed a slight modification. By grinding the tip of the tweezers – common practice among folks who use this brand – the tweezers can enable very accurate tweezing. Pictured below are my new tweezers next to an older pair of a similar style.

Tweezers

New tweezers below, an older pair above

Tweezers

New tweezers and modified tweezers

The older pair is made by Van, the newer by Plum. I don’t know if they’re commonly available in the U.S. or not.

Tweezers

Plum brand tweezers

I’m happy to report that the Plum tweezers work really well. I’ll admit that I like finding excuses to try new bonsai tools, but it’s even more rewarding to discover simple enhancements to the standard tools.

After sharpening the new tweezers, I walked straight toward the pines in my garden and – noticed that I’d yet to remove this year’s pine cones. To save the trees from putting energy toward developing cones, I removed each with a twist of my fingers. I think the colors are great. Here are a number of the first, and some second-year cones I removed.

Pine cones - Japanese black pine

Young pine cones

✕

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Filed Under: Bonsai Care Tagged With: Tools

Previous Post: « Cutback – Korean hornbeam
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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. William N. Valavanis says

    May 27, 2011 at 9:53 am

    Jonas,

    Great articles, well written and photographed. Please keep up the good work.

    So you like new tools. . . . Have you seen the new tweezers that Loews has? They are yellow and black and come in both straight and curved ends. BUT the difference is that there is a small battery controlled LED light at the other end where they are connected. Works great, the light shines right into the pine needles. They are a bit less than the Masakuni brand of tweezers, $9. I found them near the area where the Dremel wood carving tools are sold on an end cap.

    Bill

    • xwires says

      May 28, 2011 at 6:27 pm

      Thanks Bill, I haven’t seen the Lowes tweezers – what a great price!

  2. Bruce says

    May 28, 2011 at 7:25 pm

    Since I’m not near Lowes I got a set from Amazon: Smooth Point Tip Serrated Blunt Tip and Serrated Bent Tip, 3-Piece Set”

  3. Sam Ogranaja says

    May 30, 2011 at 12:13 pm

    Jonas,

    I second what Bill said. Keep up the good work. Your pictures are awesome to look at.

    Bill,

    Thank you for the Lowe’s tip. I’ll probably give those tweezers a shot. Any other “cheap” tool tips??? 🙂

    Have a great week y’all
    Sam

  4. kuromatsu says

    June 1, 2011 at 7:08 am

    I’m glad to see its not only me that has been geeking out on the tweezers. Great article!

    I opted for some ‘Royal’ tweezers found on Bonsai Focus magazine’s webshop http://www.bonsaifocus.com/index.php?page=products&pid=405
    These work well in my opinion but I’m always open to new suggestion…Thanks!

  5. keisen says

    June 2, 2011 at 5:20 pm

    I love the beautiful colors of the picked cones. Makes me think of field of lavender in Provence.

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