Thinking about butchering a Bradford for grafting..

I have these two rather large Bradfords that I’ve learned split in winters fairly easily. Both could potentially land in my car. I have a neighbor with good pears and was thinking of cutting the trees WAY back, essentially topping them and grafting them. Is that a feasible thing to do? I hear there’s a rule of leaving like 25% of the branches in tact, but I’ve also seen videos of people successfully top working entire trees. I’m gonna give it a go unless anyone can offer a strict warning. I must admit this will be my first grafting project, and a rather big one to be new at this. But, I have certainly put in a lot of research time on various methods. Any advice?

I've been thinking about doing the same thing to mine.

I've already lost 2 out of 3 Bradford pears that were in my yard when I bought the house, so I know the 3rd will probably come down any time.

The blossoms will definitely smell better too.

a big danger in removing a lot of wood is that the tree tends to really push through the new graft(s) to even out its roots. if you're not careful about staking/supporting the big new growth they can rip out in a wind. in general though, i think you should go for it. it's not exactly the same thing, but i've done a number of the black walnut trees on my property by just cutting them off at 5 or 6 feet and rind grafting the stump. with walnuts, it works better when the trunk is maybe 5 inches or less, but pears are pretty forgiving with grafting of all kinds. great opportunity to practice a few things! do a handful of each kind of graft you're interested in, and you'll figure out your favorite grafts pretty quick.

My experience with persimmon and bradfords both of which I am using as field grafting is that the first year the regrowth on a big tree is too much. I whacked them down to the ground to cause some suckering, killed all the regrowth the first summer until half way through, and then allowed the 5-10 survival shoots to harden. That way they tend to be small but harden off. I think (but have no idea) that the roots should prune quite a bit from the twice-whacking, and prevent the massive regrowth the first year that greg is referring to. I agree that the calluses seem to be better if they form a little less rapidly.

There is also this technique which may make a crotch that won't last long but seems to work well on larger base stock.