Garry Oaks - a solution?

This year I de-budded half of my garry oaks, in December. By de-budding, I refer to the practice of removing the terminal bud from the branches of the tree.
Why? The horse chestnut has a very dominant apical bud. So much so that the horse chestnut will grow as a single branch for many years - with no branching at all. The solution to causing the tree to branch is to remove the apical but before or while the but is swelling. The secondary buds then burst forth bringing many branches in many direction, each of which with their own apical dominance.
The garry oak seeding is a slow growing, stringy tree. Removing the buds could promote branching, and more branches also means the tree puts on wight faster.
My de-budded garry oaks are developing about 5 to 7 branches per twig, up from 1 to 3. I think the technique will help.

How much time can you put into one bonsai?

What I mean is how much time can you spend refining a tree?
It takes alot of time to apply wire to every branch!
Before today I did not think it was worth it. However, I needed a small juniper branch to cover a very specific area on the tree. There were 15 branchlettes. I wired the branch to heck, and it did what I wanted it too.

Now I wonder how much more I can do with branches that don't need to be wired to the nines, but could be anyway.