Brought some friends

Starting on this thick cedar branch today. Aiming for a spiral handle, but first the shaft. I found a handful of earth friends on the back porch, so I brought them along to hang out.

No name for this one

But I think I'm leaning toward Squidly. The original wood, juniper ashi cedar, is from the Texas Hill County, nestled for years between the sun and the crystalized stones of an ancient lava flow.

Wand Wednesday: Erris, the dark sun

Erris was crafted from a thick branch of cedar, originally meant to be a post in a barb wire fence. I carved away all the outer sap wood and shaped the wand from the darker heartwood. The cedar was very solid and hard, requiring two days of grinding to clear down to the core. A dark orange round jasper cabochon was a natural fit. Tiny swirls of silica and quartz twist just below the surface of the stone like the roiling face of a tiny cold sun. 16 inches.

Does the phone app work?

Been a while since Agor tested the blogger Android app. Ping ping ping.

[test works]

Cheers! Agor so happy.

Wand Wednesday: Peng

Peng, dark cedar and glowing jasper. #wandwednesday

gloves last one year

I buy a new pair every spring.

Wand Wednesday!

Peng has a sweet spiral but the wand is still under construction.

#wandwednesday #wands

Wands in the Street: Night Mulberry

It's brush collection week in our neighborhood this week. There are piles of cut branches in front of every other house. Walking the dog tonight I glanced over each pyramid of circular ends and dying leaves. Most of the cuttings are bushes like red-tip photinia or Texas mountain laurel, or soft trees like ash or hackberry, none of which are choice for wandcrafting. I've definitely made wands from each of those varieties but there are many better woods so I gave these a pass.

Until I was back home and examined the pile of branches in front of my neighbor's house. Hackberry, live oak, miscellaneous unidentified bushes ... and a sprinkling of thick mulberry branches. I was pleased. And surprised. The neighbor knew I was on the lookout for mulberry branches, prized for its dark heartwood.

It wasn't until after dark that I was able to return to collect a few branches to craft into wands.

As the tree ages, a chemical transformation at the center of the branch makes the wood harder and resistant to disease and rot. This happens for all trees, but in the mulberry, the transformation also alters the color.

I chose the branch above, with a center core of about an inch and half across. The full branch is about four feet long. I'll have to find someone to cut away the sapwood, but only after the branch has dried for a couple months.

I also snipped this smaller branch, about 20 inches long. Sometime in July, when much of the moisture will have evaporated, I'll craft my first night mulberry from this thin core. Awesome.

Thanks, neighbor!

(I'll check again tomorrow for more, if the city hasn't already collected the branches.)

Wand: Cachium

I added Cachium to Etsy.

Cachium is a 16 and three-quarter inch wand made of juniper ashei cedar with a 20mm blue-grey jasper in the base of the pommel.

I finished Cachium's initial shape almost 18 months ago, complete through sanding, but then put the wand aside. I just wasn't sure if it was actually finished. Then my friend Lillian sold to me for a steal a small bag of jasper she had hand-shaped into cabochons. There was one blue-grey stone and even as it hit my palm I knew it was part of Cachium.

I slimmed the grip and smoothed out the thin pommel before carving the setting for the jasper. I was going to remove entirely the bulge near the wand's tip but decided to just reduce it to more like a ripple. Once I was satisfied with the shape, I added a single coat of a dark stain to bring out the red in the elder wood, and then added the stone on a bright Sunday morning.

Cachium likes to hunt for treasure, or anything else you might need, if you have the proper spells. Spellbook not included.

<\:-)

Wand of Witchfire: The Next Day

On the second day of shaping the Gabon ebony into the Wand of Witchfire, my goal was continue sanding down the rounded block until it looked more like a wand than a club.

Here's the club shape:

(Reminder: the original wood has been left at the tip of the wand until I have in hand the stone to set in the tip.)

Not only did I need to remove just as much wood as I did the first day, but now I had to pay special -- extra super special -- attention to keeping the shaft of the wand as straight as possible for 13 long inches. That's a long bit of wood to keep straight when working by hand.

I was still undecided about the final shape of the hilt, so for this day I planned on shaping a thick ring at the top of the hilt, a thinner grip and leaving room for a slightly wider pommel. I used a pencil to draw the shape of the ring around the wood.

AND, I wanted to destroy as few sanding bands as possible so I had to keep the Dremel at about three-quarter speed. Slower, adding hours -- not kidding! -- to the project. At top speed the hard black wood can chew through a sanding band in about 15 minutes. Since the only place I can buy them now is on Amazon, I forged ahead at subspace speed.

I used a pencil to draw the shape of the ring where it would sit at the top of the hilt, and then used the sanding bit to grind down the wood on the outside of the lines (the inside being the ring) until the shape of the ring appeared.

From there, I sanded the remaining shape of the grip down to the pommel. Those three inches took closer to an hour, removing about a quart-inch of wood all the way around.

The shaping of the shaft ate away the rest of the afternoon, and while there wasn't much tapering down to the un-formed tip, the wand was beginning to emerge.

I didn't take anywhere near enough photos of this stage. The wood was so difficult to shape, I focused on keeping the sander moving instead of stopping every half-hour to fumble with my phone.  And my gloves, and fogged-over safety goggles and face mask the silky-fine black sawdust that had to be dashed away before exposing the electronics for photographs.

The wand already looks good, though.

Cardinal

Cardinal is a 12-inch wand of redheart wood and a zircon gemstone.

The redheart is solid and heavy so I was surprised by how easy it was to shape. Perhaps it wanted to be a wand. Yes, that's it. Let's watch the wand unfold:

Proof that I had a plan.

Then I scrubbed the rough shape with sandpaper for about an hour. Started with 100 grit until the most of the scars were removed, then 120, 180 and 220 until the surface was polished. I finished with the 400 grit, which I rarely do because the grit is so fine, but the redheart purred under the attention.

Carving the setting for the zircon was the most difficult part. I used five different grinding bits to form the shape.

Cardinal is available on Etsy for $75. Visit our showroom today!

Wand of Witchfire: Session 1

The 20-inch block of Gabon ebony I acquired for the Wand of Witchfire was heavy and dense. Much heavier than other ebony I'd crafted into wands. Those pieces of wood, while heavier than locally-found branches, were not difficult to work with. I was able to sand away their surface rather quickly to find the shape of the wand within, although the resulting sawdust was always silkier and more like powder. I thought it was just the block's length that gave the Gabon ebony the extra weight but as it turns out, the block is just super dense, unyielding and hard on hand tools.

I started out with a fresh mandrel and sanding band.

The first thing to do was round down the corners. I started the Dremel at a high speed, 35,000 rpm, and shaved down about an inch worth of the first corner on one end, then rotated to do the next corner and the next, etc, until after about half an hour I was at the one-quarter mark.

I hadn't even removed that much wood, maybe an eighth of an inch on either side of the rounded corners, and the fresh sanding band was already giving me trouble. The heat of the high rpm and the pressure was causing the rubber of the mandrel to soften, which caused the band to begin slipping up and down, which meant the exposed rubber underneath would melt into the hard wood.

Slowing the Dremel to about 80% speed seemed to help but it was already too late for the mandrel. The ruined upper and lower edges of the mandrel couldn't properly grip the band and soon I had to fetch a second new mandrel and sanding band.

After another hour of concentrated rotation sanding, I was just shy of three-quarters the way done, and my hands ached from holding the heavy wood.

Still so much further to go. It took me another hour and half to reach the last two inches of the wood. I started at 2:30 in the afternoon, it was now almost 5:45, and I was beat. I didn't need to trim the last two inches of the block, anyway, because I did not yet have a plan for the tip of the wand. According to its description, a large sapphire was embedded in the tip. I decided to wait until I had the exact stone in hand.

Before I was done for the day, I used 100-grit sandpaper to smooth the sanded wood. My fingers ached terribly but holding sandpaper was much easier than gripping the Dremel and twirling the 1.5-inch block of black wood against its pressure. After 10 or 15 minutes, I switched to the 120-grit sandpaper, and was surprised that it dug deeper into the wood than the courser grain. This was exactly what I needed to happen, as the Dremel and the sliding sanding band had left some deep scars in the wood.

As I switched again to the 180- and then 220-grit sandpaper, the fine layers of black silk-like sawdust peeled increasingly easily away until the rounded surface was smooth and slick. I had even managed to taper the shape toward the end.

I could give up now and still have a hefty club for my collection.

Wand of Witchfire: Introduction

I play Dungeons&Dragons (yes yes) and in the latest campaign I play a wizard named Hex in a land recently conquered by an evil cabal of vampires. A couple sessions ago, when we killed our first vampire, we looted a handful of magical items, mostly cursed but a few were keepers. Among them was a Wand of Witchfire, a powerful weapon borrowed from the Arduin Grimoire. Straight black wood, 18-inches long with a large blue sapphire at the tip.

Unsure of its nature, we bagged it. Or, more precisely, I bagged it. I had other magics and you should always be wary of the loot of a vampire. The staff he carried promised to wither the soul of the holder as surely as it did its victims. His dagger compelled its wielder to stab stab stab whoever might be closest. Could the wand be trusted? I didn't have time to find out. There was other business at hand, like, hiding while we healed our wounds.

Soon enough we were creeping further into the depths, searching for an underground road, when we were ambushed by creatures out of a nightmare -- huge, slashing beasts that immediately dropped half of the party. I knew my spells weren't going to save us fast enough. I could run, I could turn into a wisp and whisper away, but that wasn't Hex played the game. He drew the black wand and its magic scorched the beasts with a great blaze of savage bolts that left them paralyzed and near death. The wand saved us in a single stroke.

So, of course, now I had to make the Wand of Witchfire. I had seven weeks until the next game.

I started by scouring the local woodcraft stores for the darkest ebony wood, but the prices were too high. I didn't want to pay $80. I found a much better deal on eBay: $20 for a 20-inch 1.5x1.5 block of Gabon ebony, plus $13.50 shipping from India. $33.50 was acceptable, but I had to wait almost two weeks for the ebony to arrive.

MESSAGE INCOMING Agor fix laptop. OVER

Wands in the Street: Mmmm, no.

The best time to find branches appropriate for making rain wands is directly after the rain, when the trees release their spare parts. Most of the branches are just branches but every once in a while, one is worth picking up and considering later, and very few of those the necessary strength, shape and vestiges of supernatural vitality to craft into a wand. 

Very few. 

Last week's storms produced zero. Bupkis. Which is completely unexciting -- just look at these pictures: 

Too thin. Might be good for a single wish, but I didn't think about that until later.

I have way too much detritus du pecan already. 

Too lazy to drag home. 

Another single-wish twig. Let it go.

Don't do it. It's a trap. You'll just throw it out later. Or keep it for 2.5 years, adding another thin bone to the growing stick monster in the garage.

This is the park trash can where everyone tosses their dog poo bags. It's the dog poo can. Sorry, stick.

Dremel Test

Amazon sent me another Dremel 4000 practically immediately. In fact, the new one arrived the day after I left the non-functioning Dremel in the hands of UPS. However, I didn't have a chance to open the box until the weekend. During the week I get home as the sun is failing, so I had to wait.

First thing Saturday, I was up and ready to test the second Dremel 4000. I had one month to send it back to Amazon if it, too, failed. According to the tool's comment section section, chances were good that it was going to fail. For all my eagerness, though, I found myself staring out the back door at the wet freezing weather. Winter had arrived once again.

I waited until after 3 p.m. to haul everything to my work table under the Bradford Pear, as leafless and stoic as the season. Extension cord, new Dremel, old Dremel accessories, sandpaper, gloves, goggles, facemask, something dry to sit on, headphones, phone. And two sticks to use as test subjects: a long, thin and relatively fresh branch of white elm and an aged branch of juniper ashei cedar.

And by "test subjects" I mean wood I'm going to shape into wands without any prior planning. I didn't know what I was going to make, I just knew I had about two and half hours before the sun set.

Once I had the Dremel set up with the basic 40-grit sanding drum, I let it run at low speed for five minutes. That's according to instructions, to make sure all the parts were working correctly. At 3:27, the Dremel was still workiing as intended. Good to go.

First, I cut a 15-inch section off the elm branch.

The elm's sapwood was very pale, almost white. I started removing the bark and found the wood soft and sinewy, a sign that its source tree was probably fairly young. I actually knew exactly which tree it came from -- down the road, across the street, along the sidewalk -- and I'd guess it was less than 10 years old. By the look of its torn end, the branch might have been errantly pulled off or inexpertly pruned.

As I worked, I kept stopping work to turn off the Dremel, wait a moment, then turn it back on. The previous Dremel that I'd just purchased worked great for a couple hours then, when I paused to change bits, refused to turn back on again. Eventually my suspicions were confirmed that the housing beneath the on/off switch malfunctioned, a well-known issue with the Dremel 4000, for those who read product reviews.

In thirty minutes, I had removed all the bark and formed a rough hilt and shaft, with a thin cut outlining the boundary between the two. The sanding had gone very quickly. The Dremel's top speed is 35,000 rotations per minute, but I had it set at only 15,000 rotations per minute and the bit chew through the wood like a hungry dog. I was nervous to use the Dremel any further for this particular wand.

It was only 4 p.m. so I decided to continue shaping the white elm with sandpaper. The 100-grit was the perfect next step, stripping down the rough surface to expose a lightly-veined wood underneath. I progressed up through the 120-, 180- and the 220-grit sandpaper until the wand was polished smooth. I was glad that the vein lines remained, giving the wand a distinct look.

Next up was the 20-inch cedar branch. It was much thicker and harder than the elm. By then it was approaching 5 p.m., so I quickly started carving.

The cedar's sapwood peeled away easily when I ramped the Dremel up to 20,000 rpm, a much faster speed than I would normally use but I really needed to put the tool through its paces. It hadn't failed at lower speeds.

The Dremel's top speed was too much. At 35,000 rpm, the sanding bit dug into the wood like a shovel into sand, which is not useful, so used that high speed with the cutting bit to trim away the branch nodes.

Back down at 20,000 rpm, I shaped the hilt and the shaft within 45 minutes, leaving a thick ring at the top of the hilt, in case I wanted to design around it.

The cedar was 22 inches to start but I trimmed away the last five inches of the shaft that hooked to one side. I also trimmed away the ring material above the hilt, carving a long, tapering design for the wand. By 5:30, I was ready to give the Dremel a rest for the day. It continued to turn on and off without any problem so I gave it the night off. I brought out the sandpaper and smoothed the surface until sundown.

Placing the two test wands side-by-side, I realized they both had the same slight "s" shape, even though they both started out fairly straight. The picture of the two of them is in the last of the light. I'll refine their shapes during the next test, for which I'll have to wait another week. It rained the entire next day (today) and rain is forecasted to fall for a week.

Alas. At least the Dremel worked, and I have two new wands to refine.