That looks like it should work; I have thought about trying that at times. I have read and seen pics of Japanese orchards where they use bamboo sticks to train limbs like that

This post was edited by eboone on Wed, Aug 7, 13 at 10:51

Yes it will work. I had a row of pear trees in Italy whose limbs were secured to horizontal wires and they grew fine and were quite beautiful.

Well, I like it so far. But be careful: I snapped off a branch trying to afix the splint! It seems like a fairly clumsy operation at first. Somebody with three arms would have less trouble with it, I'm sure.