Ghostcaller

This morning, when I woke, a heavy fog had settled over the town. I knew I needed to finished the wand of holly before the night was full, if it was going to be of any service to the visiting ghosts, or visiting humans.

The following montage is a brief review of the process.

First, cutting a 16" length from the base of the holly branch.

The lowest portion of the branch had more curve than I wanted, so I cut the lowest 12 inches for a second wand, on a later day. Then I fastened the shorter piece to the remaining branch and returned the leafy branch to storage.

After sketching a quick design, I cut the main lines with the Dremel -- two near the base to help form a spherical shape at the end of the hilt, one that indicated the top of the hilt, and a last cut further up the shaft.

I carved the round feature at the base of the hilt.

Just this small bit of work gave me a feel for how to work the wood. It was soft and shaved away easily under the ministrations of the sanding bit.

Then I kept going, forming the shallow curve of the grip up to the line at the top of the hilt, and then started immediately on the shaft. I made it about halfway before taking a break.

I can already tell the shaft is going to have a slight curve. I try to minimize the bend as I work toward the tip. By the time the first cut of the shaft is complete, I'm pleased with the general shape of the wand.

Attack with sandpaper. 100 grit. 120 grit. 180 grit. 220 grit!

The holly performs just as the literature (internet) said it would -- the white grain is practically invisible, and smooth as glass. Since ghosts are said to return on Halloween nee Samhain to wreak vengeance, this wand yields the wielder invisible to their otherworldly sight.

Unfortunately, the attack of the sandpaper has wiped out half of the original lines at the top and bottom of the hilt. The line I cut further up the shaft was overwritten by the shaping of the shaft itself. I choose not to put it back in place. For the lines at the hilt, though, I used a special Dremel attachment:

I don't actually know what this bit is called, but it worked excellently. I cut the lines a little deeper than before, because I still have some shaping to do.

The next step is to refine the shape of the shaft. It's too thick near the hilt, and there's a bend that looks like a crook between joints of a finger where the thicker portion meets the thinner length near the tip. And the grip is too meaty. And the round feature at the base is unappealing.

I spend about an hour roughing up the shaft's surface with the sanding bit and then using the sandpaper to shape it down until the entire shaft is one long taper. Then I rough up the grip and sand that down in the same manner. For the rounded feature, I trim it slightly at the very end and then reduce its width to match the newly shaped grip.

Once the wand was complete, it was time to cut the setting for a cabochon of black star diopside.

I drew a circular line around the very bottom of the hilt to mark the boundary for the stone. I used a small bit to carefully form the initial round shape.

I worried over the shape of the setting for another 45 minutes, cutting it slightly deeper and wider until was a perfect fit.

Next step was to apply a coat of tung oil.

The sun was nearing the horizon. I painted the white wand with the oil and then hung it between two hoops of string tied on the opposite corner of my work table.

About four hours later, in the full dark of night, I brought the wand inside to finish it's drying.

When I arrived home late on the afternoon of Halloween, the tung oil was dried. I used superfine steel wool to buff away the splotchy topcoat. The resulting finish was a slight golden tint.

With about thirty minutes left until the sun set, I added the star diopside to the base of the wand. Soon after, the doorbell started to ring. Guests had arrived.

Ghostcaller is ready to receive spirits.

Samhain AND Halloween on the same day this year

Yesterday (Saturday) I realized that I had two days until Samhain. What kind of wand could I make for the visiting souls? One to help them? Or one to help protect others from them? Okay, both. But was there a specific type of tree associated with the dark holiday? Old creepy trees with limbs that paw at the night? A wooden spike to slay the undead, is there a special kind of wood for that?

A wand with the shape of a spike. Which tree has a pure heart to send the dead back to their plane to suffer in unrelenting peace?

Or do you need a corrupted heart to open the doorways to the Otherworld?

Better yet, do I have any good OR evil wood on hand?

Let's find out.

The Wiki link says, "People also took flames from the bonfire back to their homes. In parts of Scotland, torches of burning fir or turf were carried sunwise around homes and fields to protect them." The fir link discusses the Scots pine in northern Europe. Hmm, don't have any of that.

The Wiki on Halloween adds this about costumes, "On the custom of wearing costumes, Christian minister Prince Sorie Conteh wrote: "It was traditionally believed that the souls of the departed wandered the earth until All Saints' Day, and All Hallows' Eve provided one last chance for the dead to gain vengeance on their enemies before moving to the next world. In order to avoid being recognized by any soul that might be seeking such vengeance, people would don masks or costumes to disguise their identities" I'll infer that any wand I make should mask the wielder from the undead.

The Kurt Adler Twig Tree on Amazon looks like an properly scary-type tree. It looks like a burr oak after the leaves have fallen away. There's a host of burr oaks in the neighborhood, I probably have a stick or two of that, but its not my first choice. The local burr oak is not scary or old.

Having had enough of the brief reading adventure on the interwebs, I vaulted into my garage to see what I could find. The great thing is that I have, I think, about a billion sticks stored in buckets and closets and boxes and drawers. The taller pieces lean casually in the little space between the two garage doors. Lots of cedar, oak, pecan, and all the other types from random trees around the neighborhood. I'm unsure which pieces are burr oak. (I make a note that I need to label each piece of wood when I bring it in.)

Nothing I find is particularly notable in regards to Samhain, except this one twisted branch of really old grey oak. Its hiding among the tall sticks and potential staffs between the two garage doors. The piece is really heavy, and appropriately ghoulish. I bring it out and give it a good study.

Once I get a good look, I know that this piece isn't going to work out as a halloween wand project, because it already is a wand, and a dark one at that. There are crevices and holes in the wood, and remnants of ancient bark, that house a sentience that's spent an eternity waiting for someone to notice it. I guess that means me. I couldn't even bear to clean the nooks and crannies of the tiny spiderwebs, dust and dirt. A little bug scuttled from one crevice to the next.

I noticed that one of its twisted elbows had the profile of an old man's face. Or old woman's, one of those. You can see it here:

It's ear is one of three holes in the branch. Here's hole number two:

I'm not sure how deep that one is. Looks like a good place for spiders.

Hole number three is the largest, it plumbs the darkness of the upper core:

The twisted old oak branch emitted an air of darkness and corruption. I bit of quesiness overcame me when I considered at the least smoothing out the hilt, which really needed a minimal of shaping to make it easier to hold. The branch did not need my administrations. It told me to go away.

So, I traced it first into my book of wands and returned it to the garage, but in a place where I'll it more often. The old oak branch stood up for itself. Hiding it away didn't feel respectful so I propped it up on the main shelf in the craftroom, where I'll see it everyday.

Not to be stoppered by an evil branch, my next choice was to make a wand of holly. I have a long branch of holly that grew a few houses over. The holly had been trimmed into a large bell-shaped tree that loomed over the house's front door. It was the first thing the owners decided to sell the house. This happened while I was in the city, and my wife knew me well enough to salvage one branch before it was all taken away.

Holly is more associated with Christmas and the Winter Solstice, but it also associated with life and death, and Samhain and Halloween are all about the death and returning to life. Harry Potter's wand is made of holly, and boasts qualities of both protection and fighting. (Harry's wand, however, must have been dyed to a darker color but it's not the bright white of holly wood.)

Now I'm excited. Holly isn't specifically a Samhain or Halloween, but I think this wand will be a real ghostcaller. 

Wands on the Street: Maybe a Mulberry?

Two streets over, East-wise, there's a few trees I've never been able to identify. Their main trunk hunches over at about five feet and sprouts thinner branches straight up like fingers. Its leaves are thick-veined and shaped like hearts.

One of these trees had been pruned back last week. Its thick branches stacked along the easement for brush collection. I've been walking past these trees for nearly 20 years and this was first time I'd seen the interior of its wood. The sapwood, the layer directly beneath the outer bark, was light yellow and its heartwood at the center was a deep brown. Most trees used for urban landscaping have a light sapwood and heartwood, like oak and ash and pecan and definitely sycamore and cottonwood. So, I dragged one of the cut branches home. It was only three feet long but heavy, so heavy.

The inch and a half diameter of heartwood will make a beautiful wand, or series of wands, but I'll let it dry for at least a month before carving into the wood. I hope the heartwood doesn't lighten.

I also snagged a nearby leaf, because I needed to finally figure out what type of tree it was. Fall is here so the leaves aren't at their most fresh. Half of them have fallen to the ground.

After a bit of searching on the interwebs, I think I narrowed the tree's type down to a mulberry, probably a male mulberry tree, because I've never once seen them with berries. Or I wasn't paying attention. I could still be wrong.

Here's some things I learned on the interwebs about the mulberry tree:

• associated with healing, from root to berries supposedly used for medicines
  
• associated with the beginning of time, with the energies of the yin and the yang before there was a split
  
• rare for an domestic hardwood
  
• not included in this poem about Nine Blessed Trees
  
• There are nine blessed trees.

There might be more informed sources in book form.

Refining work on Rose

The last we saw of Rose, the wand of pink tulipwood, I'd just finished carving the deep setting for a small sphere of rose quartz in the base of the hilt. The setting turned out much better than I expected, and the quartz was reluctant to be removed once I'd tested it in the setting, but I still had some work yet to do so it had to come out.

I wasn't satisfied with the petals in the hilt. The grooves that formed the shape of the petals as they wrapped around the hilt were in poor shape, and the petals themselves were too bulky. It seemed that the more I worked to create the petal shape, the worse the shaping looked. Cue the dramatic lighting.

I just couldn't get the bits to cut the lines I could see in my mind. But that was okay. I could smooth down the edges and still keep the sway of the grooves, and finish with a nice-looking wand that might not look like a flower.

The solution of course was the 180-grit sandpaper I'd just picked up at the hardware store. I was anxious to use it. The tulipwood was easy to scar and I was afraid that the 120-grit sandpaper would leave too many tiny sanding marks in the wood. And the 220-grit sandpaper was too fine a grit to remove the small scars I'd left behind trying to form the leaves. The 220 would polish those wounds into the softest, smoothest scars a piece of wood ever did see, but it wouldn't remove them without extensive sanding.

(180-grit sandpaper in red, 100-grit in green) True enough, the 180 easily smoothed down the rough edges of the grooves, and the larger humps of the petal's upward curve, leaving behind a subtler shape to the petals.

I spent more time sanding Rose with the 220-grit until the entire wand was uniformly smooth and all the tiny marks were removed. I fished out the tung oil and a brush and applied a thin coat to the tulipwood. To dry, I set the wand across two hoops of string I have tied at one end of my worktable.

Rose hung out here for the afternoon. 

Garnets for Cedar 107

I dug through my store of gems and stones and found four small garnets to embed in Cedar 107, the wand of Juniperus ashei with the witch-broom hilt. The stories of garnets include warrior stones, healing stones, vitality and creativity and accessing memories, etc, so here's an easy Google search link for your casual reading time.

I've had these four stones for so long that I no longer remember how I acquired them. I still have them because I've been waiting for the right wand to come along. Cedar 107's the rich, honey wood and confident balance is a strong match for the garnets' deep color and storied past. Together they'll make a fine a dueler's wand, for sure.

I had to go to Lowe's

I had to go to Lowe's, the real crafting store. This happens a lot because the closest box-chair superstore is half a mile away. I needed sandpaper and I couldn't wait. My last quarter sheets of 120- and 220-grit sandpaper were now no-grit and I had two wands to finish before I lost sunlight.

At the store, I found more than I'm looking for, naturally. 120 grit sandpaper yeah 220 yeah yeah -- but what's this? 180-grit sandpaper? Not as coarse as the 120 and yet not so fine as the 220. My heart double-beat. I brushed my fingers over the sandpaper's dusty red surface. The grit tickled my fingertips. I gurgled.

My adventures with sandpaper seem unending. I slid the package of 180 in-between the packages of 120 and 220 I had already selected. With wands in the hopper, I was almost giddy. What was wrong with me? Oh right, I was in a hardware store.

I walked away. I didn't need anything else but I couldn't leave without swinging by the rotary tool accessories display. That's where all the Dremel-accessory fans congregate, of course. And normally the display would be right there, directly to the right of the self-checkout area, but today it was not. Christmas sales were already in place. The entire far side of the store was a-glitter with ornaments and trees and large blow-up yard things. Everything else had been shifted to the right to make room for the expansive holiday.

I trudged back into the weeds of the power tools section, and found the rotatary accessories' new home in the very most back corner aka the dead zone. My favorite place in the huge store.

I eyed the selection. There was nothing new. I picked out a detail abrasive brush to finish the notches in the Cedar 107. I hadn't used one of these in a while, since I can use a fold of sandpaper in the notch, but the brush would more easily even out its shape.

(I didn't open the package in the store. I took it home first.)

The store was plenty busy. A fellow shopper even passed through the rotary tool accessory section, walking by where I was standing. Traffic jam in Aisle 5092!  I don't know what he was looking for but apparently it was directly behind me. When I moved out of his way, one step over, I encountered the larger rotary tool accessories.

And there I saw the Right-Angle Attachment. Heart fluttered. I could really cut some right angles with a tool like that.

I poked at the packaging. $30. Hmm. Christmas is coming. Santa is coming (after Halloween)!

Carving Cedar 107: Third Cuts

The shaping of Cedar 107 continues! Thank you for continuing to read. When we last left our intrepid proto-wand, I had completed the initial shaping of both the hilt and the shaft.

While those two major features are fairly close to the original design, the angled ring at the junction of the hilt and the shaft did not turn out as I'd planned. Instead of having sharps angle on either side that crested in a clean line, the middle line is too rounded and it doesn't feel like I enough wood to create the imagined angles. Also, the grip on the hilt doesn't fit right in my hand. It might, if there wasn't a broom-like feature below the handle, while moves the balance forward.

I decide to reshape the center ring from a high angle to a wide, flat ring with two additional thin lines dividing the ring into three parts -- a wider center band with a thin band on either side. On the sketch, I plan for four small round gems in the center of the wide band, evenly spaced. I change the shape of the grip from a shallow curve to a shallow slope that descends from the bottom of the grip to the middle and then runs straight into the wide ring at the top of the hilt. The width of the top of the grip should match the wide of the bottom of the shaft on the other side of the middle ring. At least that's the plan.

I draw the lines to indicate the width of the middle band.I turn the Dremel on high and put the sanding bit to work.  Before leveling off the ring, I trim back the wood on either of the ring so that I don't get lost. I sand down the top of the hilt until it's a straight line from the middle of the grip up to the ring. The shaft side of the ring is already thinner but I trim it down even further. A lot of the shaft needs to be thinner but I leave a lot of that work for after I get the ring in shape.

Once the ring is flattened evenly, I continue trimming the grip and the shaft until both sides appear even on either side of the ring. The sanding bit, however, has left a definite softness to the ring where the edge meets the shaft and the grip. I pencil a line to indicate the desired edges and use the Dremel's cutting disc to cut away the excess material. I cut the ring's lines a little deeper into the wood to use as a gauge for how far I need to trim the shaft and the grip.

I sand down to the shaft and grip, then use the 100- and 120-grit sandpaper to smooth the surface. I already feel better about the design.

Looking more closely, the shaft and the grip on either side of the ring are not even all the way around. I added red lines to the picture below to illustrate exactly how much I still needed to trim from the hilt side.

In reality, I roughly pencil-shade the biggest section I need to remove from the grip. I use the sanding bit to trim that area down further.

After another round of sandpaper, the grip is even all the way around. However, I can tell that the middle ring that I've just formed isn't wide enough to divide into three section as I had re-designed -- or, to be more specific -- I wasn't confident enough in my line-cutting skills to get the job done. I decide instead to cut notches on either side of the ring, similar to the notch I cut between the base of the hilt and the broom-shaped handle. I make the notches slightly wider than the width of the cutting disc, and use an engraving bit to smooth the the notches by hand (holding the engraving bit with my fingers to carefully file back and forth in the tiny space).

Cedar 107 is looking good at this point. I continue using the 100-, 120 and 220-grit sandpaper to refine the shape. I also lightly sand the broom-shaped feature, because its edges and points continue to stab at my forearm. After the sanding, the broom is much easier to handle, almost pleasant.

Next steps are to continue sanding down the wider sections of the lower shaft and add the gems around the ring.

But for now, cupcakes!

Carving Cedar 107: Second Cuts

Returning to the branch of Juniperus ashei cedar, I quickly trim away the excess wood on the last six inches. I'm not trying to make anything pretty at this point, I'm just trying to find the shape of the shaft. I'm beginning to wonder if I'll be able to produce a straight shaft. The first half was working out okay but the last part is looking less than okay. By the time I reach the tip, I'm convinced that I'm going to lose several inches off the end before I'm done.

Once I complete the first pass, I get a second wind. I start again to the base of the shaft at the top of the hilt and begin shaping in earnest. I'm still using the Dremel 407 1/2" Drum Sander, even though I've reached the softer heartwood, the innermost wood of the branch. I wind my way up the shaft, turning the wood slowly in my free hand, trying to keep an equal amount of pressure on the wood as I peel it away with the sander. Soon I'm back near the tip again.

The very tip of the wood is very frayed, as opposed to the base of the hilt, which appears frayed but is still mostly intact under the surface. I start to gently work with the tip, sanding upward and trying not to dig too deep. Instead, I make quick passes, rotating the wood a bit faster in my hand but not carelessly. By the time I'm halfway down to the heartwood, I stop to take a realistic assessment of the tip.

Indeed, the last two inches of wood at the tip is too frail. I decide to cut it off. I pop off the sanding bit and attach the cutting wheel, the same bit I used to carve the notch in the ring near the base of the hilt. I could splinter the wood if I try to cut straight through it or snap it off. I cut a ring thin around the base of the section I want to remove until there's just the tiniest amount of wood attaching the tip from the rest of the shaft.

Then I snap it off. With my hand.

The wood I'm left with looks a lot like a wand.

An ungainly wand with a shaft that's too thick near the hilt, a malformed angled ring at the top of the hilt and a grip that needs trimming. I'm still not sure about the broom-shaped section below the hilt. But all is well, because even though I'm made a lot of progress, the wand is nowhere near finished. Don't lose heart!

I spend about 30 minutes smoothing the rough wood with the sanding bit, moving it slowly back and forth along the shaft and in the shallow groove the grip. I trim back the thicker portion of the lower shaft and then sand it smooth again.

Then I break out the sandpaper. I fold a new square of the 100-grit sandpaper to smooth the shape of the entire wand, from the tip of the shaft all the way down to the broomy base of the hilt. I can see that the shaft is not entirely straight, but I let that go for now. Sanding doesn't mean the wand is finished, it just means I really need to understand what I have to do.

By the time my arms tire out from sanding, Cedar 107 no longer looks like a mangled stick I'd find on the side of the road.

The next step is to return to the original design, comparing what I intended to what I've actually created. I'm not confident in the angled ring at the top of the hilt, and the broom section below the hilt keeps poking me in the arm when I hold the wand by the grip. My back hurts from vulturing over the wood as I cut, carved and sanded. Apparently even simple designs require a lot of work.

Carving Cedar 107: First Cuts

Back to the Juniperus ashei cedar. I sketched a simple design that includes a slight concave grip and an angled ring around the top of the hilt that descends down into a long, straight shaft. For the base of the hilt, I intend to keep the original wood, but we'll just see how that goes.

I like how, in the design, the extended hilt looks like the end of a broom; however, the branch is 20 inches from bow to stern (??), which is really long, so the hilt as drawn is seven inches.

I don't spend much time worrying over the merits of the design. It feels right. You can see in the photo above that I've already penciled in the lines for the primary cuts for the hilt.

The first thing I do is to smooth down two large branch nodes that stuck out of side. I use the regular Dremel 407 1/2" Drum Sander to sand the nodes down, revealing the honey-colored wood underneath the sun-bleached and weather-hardened bark.

I move down to the hilt to start the shaping, beginning with the grip. I've drawn a line around the middle of this section where the grip will be the thinnest, flaring outward to the top and the line I've drawn to mark the base of the grip. Holding the Dremel so that it's angled slightly toward me, I use the tip of the sanding bit carve a shallow groove around the branch, following the line. With that little bit of opening in the wood, I'm able to apply more of the sanding bit (instead of just the tip) to carve deeper into the groove, moving away from the center line toward the bottom.

I slowly rotate the branch in my other hand, peeling away the wood and moving the sanding bit slightly further down the grip with each turn, then returning to the mid-point and digging a bit deeper into the wood and moving down the grip again. I repeat this process until the middle of the grip is nearly as thin as I want it to get. Then I turned the branch around and sanded down the upper section of the grip in the same manner. Soon I have an hour-glass shape.

Next is to carve the ringed notch at the bottom of the grip. Similar to how I started the grip, I draw a line to indicate the middle of the ring and then use the angled sanding bit to carve from the center line to the outer line. This part happens really fast because I just spent an hour shaping the five inches of grip in the same manner. Instead of having to create a gentle tapering, I only have to carve an angled cut about as deep as the length of the sanding bit.

I ditch the sanding bit and attach a Dremel Sanding Disc to cut the notch at the center of the ring. The sanding disc I have mounted is starting to get a little frayed but it still cuts a straight line, about 1/16-inch wide.

With the proto-wand in my left hand and braced against my leg, I turn the Dremel on high and slowly begin cutting the line at the center of the ring. I use a high speed here because I want to quickly get a clean, deep cut as I rotate the wood, trying not to pause or to lift the cutting bit away from the wood. Whenever I pause or lift the bit, I have to start again from the exact place I left or I'll get differentiations in the cut. I also have to keep the line straight or the ring won't meet itself on the other side.

I widen the cut on the second time around to about 1/8 of an inch, and then I clean the notch by rotating the proto-wand several more times, making sure the edges of defined and the depth uniformly deep all the way around.

Before I take a break, I decide to get a start on the shaft. There are 13 inches of wood to sand down to 1/2 to 1/4 inch, straight. I concentrate on removing an initial layer for a couple inches, returning to the basic sanding bit and starting at the top of the hilt, working toward the tip of the shaft. After the first layer is removed, I repeat the process several more times.

I get about a third of the way up the shaft before it's time to stop to rest my back. When I return, I'll finish the first cut of the shaft and then complete the shaping of the hilt.