Jon, From what I can determine from your narrative and your pix, the thrust of your pruning is to keep the fig tree to a manageable height - is this a correct assumption?.....Elder

Bingo. Most are on a hill, so dealing with a ladder is not a realistic option. Also makes it easier to handle birdnet, prune, harvest, closer spacing, more varieties (like I need that), etc, etc. I let it get a little height with first year, and have pruned it more severely ever since. Now I am starting even shorter from year one.

Nice job. Correct me if I'm wrong but in the Pacific Northwest if I pruned like this I would have almost no figs this year, since we get few main-crop figs. I've been somewhat confused over how to prune in a maritime climate and still get a decent breba crop. I guess a compromise would have to be reached, like heading back only a portion of the tree each year.

Also, how is it possible to determine where a new branch can form. On apples and such you can see a dormant bud, but not on fig trees. For example, if you cut the tree in the picture above down to where there were only the three main trunks, would the tree sprout more branches, or is that wood too old and spent already?

No having grown in the PNW, I can only speculate, but pruning half of the branches for size, and leaving half for breba crop, and then alternating each year makes sense.

A new branch can form at each previous season leaf node. Some varieties tend to send up a new shoot only from the node closest to the tip (after pruning), some will develop 2 or 3 shoots. Eventually the ones which have only one shoot will have more if you keep pruning them back.

The older wood will also sprout new shoots. The most extreme example would be when a tree dies back to the ground and new shoots emerge in the Spring. Generally, if you have root energy, it will find a way to express itself somehow, somewhere on the tree as new growth.

Wow, you really cut it back! Maybe you can help me :)
I have a 5-6 year old black mission fig in a pot. I nearly killed it 1.5 years ago, I left it out in the sun too long and thought it was a goner. With a lot of love (and much to my surprise) it rebounded fantastically. Each winter i let it get cold enough to drop it's leaves, then bring it inside where it's nice and warm. I'm in westchester NY, it's white outside, and the leaves are 9 inches across.

Unfortunately, it seems to enjoy the weather in here, the tree is 5' tall (from the base), with 4 3-4' branches and a 4' lead at 1' up. Only one of those branches has started new branches, and I'd like to encourage it to become a bush instead of a banyon. I see the advice above about where to prune, but where should i start? And given that there's 6-12" of new green growth on the end, WHEN should I prune?

Thanks for any help you can give (and tolerating the newbie)

The short answer is to remove everything that grew last season/year back to about 3 leaf nodes from where it started growing last year/season. Even though it isn't dormant, it should still be fine. Black Mission is not much of one for branching, but if you are persistent, it will put out extra limbs. You can repeat this pruning each year, but better to do it when dormant, hereafter.

Every limb on the three in the pictures is pruned to 2-3 nodes each season.