Don't use rubber for trunk fusion

It's been 3 months since I fused 5 ficuses into one, they grew well since then, so it's time to check what's really going on there. This is how it looked today, a lot of leaves:

It's quite hard to see through this mess, so I performed defoliation, leaving 1-2 leaves on tip of each branch. Defoliation is fine for these trees, in nature animals like giraffes do it all the time.

Now the branch structure is clearly visible. Several new branches have grown. I don't want the tree to be any taller or wider at the moment, and some branches are growing in wrong directions. I'm cutting some of them and wiring the others. This is after removing old wire and trimming:

For this project I used rubber bands from bicycle tube to see if they made less damage to trees while still facilitating fusion. Well, it looks like the fusion part is failing:

Stems are bound together no problem, but they are not fusing after 3 months. Compare it with how other ficuses bound with steel wire fused just after 6 weeks! Even correction to number of plants and maybe better genes doesn't explain the difference.

Actually, during my manipulations with the plant, one of rubber bands have snapped so I could see its impact on trees, which was clearly visible dent. So hope for low damage was in vain as well. I decided to replace rubber with steel wires.

Now a bit of wiring and ready to go back to the greenhouse! 

3-trunks fused ficus wiring

Trunk fusion I performed almost 5 months ago was certainly a success. Steel wires I used are now totally hidden under the bark, fused trunk has perfectly cylindrical shape and seams between original trunks have almost vanished. Scars from wires are still there, as well as their cut ends, which now serve as some kind of thorns. But I believe it's just a matter of time until they disappear. Also, several branches have grown in various places.

I added new wire bonds as it grew taller approximately every month and cut the tallest trees to let the lagging one to catch up. Maybe they way I did bonds or alignment of lighting in the greenhouse made the plant to grow in a very curved manner.

In this case that's not what I wanted. My plan for this specimen is to grow straight and tall. I tried realigning it relative to light, but this just added curvature in opposite direction. So I had to wire it while it's not too late. I have 1mm aluminum wire in thick rubber coating. When I wound it around trunk, it didn't held shape. So I made a few holes in the pot and used more wire to stretch the tree in opposite directions of one plane, attaching it on different height. Some curvature stayed, but now it looks not that morbid:

I also strapped new lower branches to main trunk with this thick wire. Binding is less tight than I did previously, but it's temporary anyway and branches are too thin so far. Now I'm going to leave it like this for several months until it's time to repot.