AusBonsai

Hi everyone, beginner here who has acquired the Fig below said to be 15 years old. I am wondering what all the experts would do to it. It is 48cm high and 50mm diameter immediately above the root mass.
My thoughts are to thin out the small branches and defoliate .

OR do a chop above the second or perhaps the third branch, I had thoughts on bending the first and second branches down a but they are very stiff .

Please give me your ideas

Thats a good tree for developing and refining. I would definitely repot it into a larger pot and perhaps have the tree a bit deeper in the potting mix so the soil is covering the exposed roots.

If it were mine I would chop it at the first branch to increase taper and probably do a ground layer to get a new set of roots. I am not sure the base and roots will be improved by burying them. Pot into a larger pot if you shop it right back to help speed up growth. My

Its a hard thing when new to bonsai to be told to chop your tree right down, pot it in a large pot and leave it for a couple of years before touching it again. That is probably the best thing for this tree. Especially if you cut the thick roots below the finer ones and plant it at a different angle. There are some great threads on here as to how to get figs growing strongly too. Like this one viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6717&start=0

However, if you want to practice some techniques I think Brian gave a good idea when he said

Brian wrote:Thats a good tree for developing and refining. I would definitely repot it into a larger pot and perhaps have the tree a bit deeper in the potting mix so the soil is covering the exposed roots.

I would still perhaps remove, or atleast cut hard, the larger roots and pot it into a large plastic pot with a good free draining mix. Maybe cut the branches back to about an inch or 2 rather than defoliate and let it grow for the rest of this season. After the growth has slowed you will be able to wire out any new growth and cut back to a few sets of leaves next spring ready for the next growth spurt. Defoliation is really for building fine ramification and smaller leaves after you have built some branch structure.

This will give you something to play with for a few years while you learn a few more things and you can always cut back hard later to create taper.

If it were mine (love starting a bonsai sentence like that, makes us way more daring), I would be attempting to get the branches all pointing at the sun to be layered down, winch, wire, notch cutting, something Dansai to flatten it out over the next two or three years to get a wide "fig" canopy on to it, OR cut it down and start again.
I have done this now a few times and have never regretted creating a completely new tree.
First work with what you have then start thinking about what you can do without?

And of course enjoy what your doing either way.