A young Japanese Maple I purchased as a seedling (it was about 24", guessing around 2-3 years old). It had a natural curvature, so I thought about a Windswept style, especially since I know some feel deciduous trees should have gentler curves and movement.

I reported it in the early spring and wired it, I haven't been pruning it since I trimmed the roots back some and wanted to encourage growth. Felt it might be fun to experiment and see if I could make a semi Cascade.

Any recommendations on when I should take the wires off? I'm in the PNW, northern hemisphere, in Alpine desert at 5k feet elevation.

Any constructive feedback is welcome! Ignore the smaller trees haha they're not ready...

Just watch the progress and remove the wires just before they start to bite in.

You may want to consider change the apex to reach for the sky. Anything else looks unnatural.

Hey Bento.

You know, drawing a project (or multiple) to the tree helps me a lot to choose a way, and plan interventions on the tree.
Because indecisions will come, ahhah.

First you should choose a aproximate height for it, so you'll know how much you have to thicken your base.
On this movement you gave, you plan to rotate the plant to make it cascade?

When you make small tree, you should preffer tighter curves, but I think you might not be able to bent the lower trunk anymore,
So if you want, you can thicken a little more, then cut it back to a new leader, a younger branch which is wired, or can be wired.
That also creates taper, and you can propagate from the sacrificed branch if you feel like.

But first I would stare and decide how I want it to look.