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["Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>]

I've used the carriage bolt method on trees with good success.  If you use a stainless steel bolt and nut, and leave some extra length, you can unscrew the nut a few turns every year or so and prevent it from being engulfed.
-Lon Rombough
Grapes, writing, consulting, my book, The Grape Grower, at http://www.bunchgrapes.com  Winner of the Garden Writers Association "Best Talent in Writing" award for 2003. 
For even more grape lessons, go to  http://www.grapeschool.com
For all other things grape,   http://www.vitisearch.com

On Oct 2, 2007, at 10:43 AM, rob hamilton wrote:

Your tree might be to small for this, but this brings up the time my Loquat tree split in half from the weight of a big ice storm we had about 4 years ago. 
Some people from this list told be to bore hole through the middle of the tree trunk and put a large carriage bolt through it with some washers of each end and finish it with a nut to hold the trunk gather. I put some tape across the wound to keep the water out and braced the branches with a some cargo tie. 

I thought this was crazy, but the tree is healing quite nicely. The wood is growing around the the bolt, washers and the nut. A few more years, it will be covered. I need to make sure to mark it just in case I need attack it with a chain saw.

That crotch might always be a little weaker that the rest, but I read you can aways take some branches that are growing toward each other and twist them together. In time they will become one and may be a natural brace.

I have been thinking of this last method as a way of insuring rows of bushes from crown borer attacks. If a bushes crown gets girdled the bush can be nourished from the neighboring bushes, till it re-roots. Just a theory..