Mara, you can buy thousands of rubber bands from Staples or Office Max, they are sold by the pound and are very cheap. They're quite easy to use. Do not use the rubber bands from grafting supply store because those are expensive and are not really any better. for the price of twenty strips of special grafting bands, you can get 500 pieces of rubber band from Office max. Electrical tape are not that strong, in the sense that they loosen up when it gets warmer or hotter later in the season, and it becomes pliable, and so there is no real support. Better to use ordinary masking tape as that one is more rigid. the masking tape will tear later in the season as they union expands due to growth but could come off prematurely. I would still go with parafilm, then rubber band, then parafilm layer over the rubber band. It is very strong, and could last very long, and expands with the growing union. It comes off after one season.

Hard to say from the unknown size of the tree how much 1.5" is but going by my 3 year old trees I would say it will be fine on its own. I think even my 3 year old dwarf tree could deal with 1.5". But that would be enough to plan on replacing my 2 year old dwarf grafts. My roommate is good about weed eating trees to death. It's only a whack here and there (except for the new tree that he debarked clear around once), but a little bit every week for 6 months adds up. It took a lot of yelling to get him to stop weed eating the trees at all.

Konrad, I wish you would start a new post with the pictures (f you have them). I have two dwarf rootstocks from trees that the grafts died due to girdling from rabbits; want to use some of the prunings from my standard trees to try to graft to those. Good pictures are so helpful.

I think that is a VERY bad idea...there is NO reason to believe the root stock is special from one new growth branch ......you can buy 10 red Acer palmatum generic seed growns for what one nice Seiryu may cost. Both green and red A.P.'s are used for root stock the latter a bit more rare since many growers can sell them to umknowing folks for biggeer bucks than the green even though they most likely will be ORDINARY...Ideally they should match but most growers are too busy, lazy, or just don't care.... and the green is always much cheaper especially larger diameter RS for the same reason above they can sell them for 25$$ or more in 3-4 years. Whatever keeping an unknown and throwing out a Known cultivar is at the very least ignorant and very short sited IMHO...But one persons decisions may be so while anothers is otherwise ...that is my opinion but it is not my tree , decision and I am NOT infallable so make your own choice!! David