Here we go again! Thanks leatherback for that great article on trunk development! I also read the main article linked with it. Possibly a newb question, but does anyone just take a tree when its relatively small and take whatever it is at the time and start training it? one of the trees Im thinking about working with, I thought looked pretty good now, and was gonna let it grow just a little and start. The maple Im looking at has great balance, but a spaghetti trunk! If it cant grow naturally better when I take it to a better environment for growth, Ill probably try some of your techniques... I guess I had no idea of what actually goes into making one of these pieces! Most of the trees in the gallery dont look to me like that kind of seemingly extreme work was done to them! Original Growth, or Master Bonsai Craftsman? Obviously some of both but you know what im geting at...

Thank you all for your time! Trying to absorb as much of your collective knowledge as i can, thank you very much for the insights!

The trunk of a maple tree will never get thick in a small pot.It's best to put them in grow boxes or the ground. I guess you could start training them, but they sound like seedlings.
Can you post a picture?

so new to this i am in reading mode and found this forum. My question is if you have say a maple in a growing box or the ground, what stops it getting too big for bonsai while waiting for the trunk to thicken up? How big should the growing box be?

well it is called the "hack back" method and basically the tree is left to grow uncontroled to a large size and then cut back to almost nothing and than left to grow again. this procedure is repeated until the trunk is the size that is wanted while also creating taper in the trunk the roots are pruned early to start shaping them to a shallow formation. this is usually done in the ground for fastest growth . once the trunk is close to the wanted size it can be tranfered to a growbox to refine roots and begin branch formation. the size of the box is based on the size of the rootmass. there must be room for more roots to grow . upon future repottings the roots are reduced and the box can be made smaller.

and of course there is a whole article about this:
www.bonsaiempire.com/articles/advanced/bonsai-trunk-creation