I am a firm believer in inventing and adapting. During my first year growing bonsai, I had no "bonsai" tools. Then my first purchase was a spherical knob cutter. Three years and I bought an inexpensive pair of shears; five years, I finally bought a concave cutter. I'm not cheap or broke, I just haven't needed more. I spend my money on plants and things for which there aren't substitutes.

     If you want to buy tools and such, I have no objections. The point is that there is nothing magical about bonsai tools; they are only tools designed to do certain jobs and sometimes other tools can do them. Tools can sometimes be made or adapted from other objects.

     Cutting Tools:  Pruning saws, loppers, pruning shears, household scissors, wire-cutters, cuticle/baby scissors --- these can all be applied in their various ways from severe pruning of nursery stock down to the finest trimming of twigs or defoliation. A really surprising find was a pair of squeeze-action sewing snips (Walmart in USA), which work great as defoliation shears.

     A spherical knob cutter, however, is handy since it takes a round concave bite, allowing a large wound to heal over smoothly. A concave cutter likewise trims a branch close the the trunk with a small bite, for the same purpose. A bonsai wire-cutter is also a tool which is difficult to replace, as its cutting tip can snip wire on a branch without damaging the bark --- the safest way to remove wire, as uncoiling for re-use is likely to cause more damage than it's worth. If you anneal your own copper wire, it's not worth it, anyway.

     Wire: Bonsai wire seems a bit expensive to me. If you're wiring trees, it's much easier and enjoyable if you're not counting $ while you're doing it. I purchase general-purpose copper wiring from hardware stores, strip off the insulation, unwind the strands if necessary, coil it up losely, and anneal it myself, over a charcoal hibachi. Place the coil on a hot bed of coals until it glows dull red; then remove it from the coals and let it cool. It isn't as clean or as pretty as store-bought, but works just as well, for pennies instead of dollars. My next batch will test a gas grill for annealing.

     Soil: I have purchased "bonsai soil" for an emergency repotting, when I had no materials with which to make my own. However, my basic bonsai soil is made from pine bark mulch and oil-pickup material from Auto Zone. All material is sieved to remove large and small particles; I generally use what passes thru a 1/8" screen, but remains on a 1/16" screen. Even with the large quantity of fine particles or large chunks that is unusable, it's economical.

     The oil-pickup material I mentioned is a fired clay which will not dissolve when wet. If you have to search for your own equivalent material, test a handful by soaking it overnight in water, and rubbing it in your fingers to test its consistency. If it breaks down into finer particles, do not use it in bonsai mix. Other alternatives are: granite chicken grit from a feed supply store, and coarse blasting sand, available from a sandblasting business, neither of which will dissolve. I prefer the fired clay, as its color is more appealing.

     For larger containers, such as nursery-size training pots, I use about a 60/40 mix of cheap potting soil and unsieved oil-pickup clay or equivalent. It's quicker and cheaper than bonsai mix, and supplies a rich, but well-drained soil volume for the vigorous growth and healthy root systems of developing bonsai.

     Sieves: Soil-sieving screens can be constructed from 1x2 wood (furring strips) and several sizes of screen, available from hardware stores. I used a 1/4" and 1/2" "hardware cloth", and 1/16" window screening. The 1x2s are cut and glued/nailed together to form a tray about 1'x2' wide and 1 1/2" deep (1x2's are actually about 3/4" by 1 1/2"). The screens are cut to the 1'x2' dimension to fit, and stapled to the bottom of each tray. These hold a couple of handfuls of soil, and can be stacked.

     The standard keeper soil is too large for the tiniest, "shohin" pots, and the soil which does pass thru the 1/16" screen contains too much dust for any pot. At a grocery store, I found a plastic re-usable drip coffee filter with a small, nylon mesh which does a good job of sifting out dust from what passes thru the 1/16" screen.     

     Even purchased bonsai soil mix should be sieved, so these are handy either way you go on bonsai soil mix.

     Pots: Unfortunately, there's no substitute for bonsai pots if that's what you need. Finding them can be difficult, and affording them even more so. The good news is that you do not have to have bonsai pots to grow bonsai. They can be grown in training pots or in the ground. An analogy might be the artist painting in his messy, cluttered studio a beautiful work of art which only years later will find its way into an appropriate frame.