Wand practice
The other week we visited the Harry Potter experience over by Watford. For some pictures see Instagram or Twitter. In the shop, there were some replica wands made from plastic and they were £32 each. Much as I love a good Potter film and admire the designs these are not good value for money. So I offered to make one from real wood.
We have a lovely maple tree in the garden but some of the branches had died off and to save them from blowing down in the wind we had sawn them off the other winter. That had given me some small logs of maple which I thought could come in handy for small projects and handles. Unfortunately, those split whilst drying so I used a chisel to cleeve them into smaller solid pieces. One of those seemed just the right size for a magic wand.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
Abe Lincoln
I tried the spokeshave from last year’s Maker Central but it just skated over the wood. So I took out the blade and sharpened it. And then it produced nice curly shavings. After consulting with my customer, I thinned down the wand, rounded off the edges and removed “that little catchy bit”.
It was then sanded all over and the end ground to a shallow point using the grinder which gave it a nice burnt effect. The handle has a lovely rounded piece that fits nicely in the palm of your hand. I also added a little bit of detailing to the handle.
Finally, a touch of oil to bring out the colour.
So one happy young witch with her 9 1/4 inch Maple with a core of Unicorn hair. I got to see how nicely the maple works, I’m sure one of the larger pieces will make a nice handle for something. And our maple tree seems to be happy without its extra branches too.
Posted in: Projects
Materials: Maple
Tags: magic, Trees, wand
Metal sculpture in brass, mounted on an 1800s French Coin
Top class job kid