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. 

Windally

Windally is a 13.5 inch wand from a Live Oak tree. A 2-inch clear quartz is held in the open end of the wand. Several spots of dark inclusions float inside the roughly-cut crystal. A small Herkimer diamond is wedged in hilt.

Here's an additional photo of how she started out:

Another Dremel down

I was excited this past Wednesday when my new Dremel 4000 arrived from Amazon, and I was ready right then to get to work, but I didn't have an opportunity until Saturday to get on with the wand making business. On Saturday, even though the weather was below freezing, I gathered everything together and set up shop on the table in the backyard. I had two wands to continue working on, one of them the Christmas tree pine I'd intended to finish before the holiday.

But after three hours of work, the new Dremel stopped working. I'd stopped to change bits. I needed the wheel sander instead of the 40-grit sanding drum. The sanding drum required that I switch out collet to hold the thinner stem of the wheel sander. After that was in place, with the wheel sander snug in the chuck, I slid the new tool's switch to ON but it stayed OFF. I did that about a dozen more times. The Dremel wouldn't turn back on.

I fiddled with the chuck and the collets, and the commutator brushes. The commutator brushes are these little doo-dads that stick down into the Demel's motor to perform some sort of fancy electrical thing, to which an explanation is linked here.

I swapped electrical outlets, in case the one I'd been using was dead. Still no good. I tried a third outlet. Dead. Dremel down.

I waited a full day and tried everything again, this time paying special attention to the commutator brushes, since I usually did not inspect those. All the pieces looked intact. The Dremel continued to be dead.

The shaft lock button might also be the source of the problem. This is the little button below the nose cap that locks the collet nut in place in order to swap out the bits. The assembly underneath the button might have fallen apart or slipped loose (insert technical jargon) but there was no way for me find out without taking the entire Dremel apart. I don't want to do that for a brand new piece of equipment.

I'll have to send this one back to Amazon, which will send me another one immediately, which is convenient but I've lost another weekend of work. Correction: I did significant work on two wands and started another, more complicated wand.

I'd hoped to get more done, but I'll be patient and concentrate instead on things I can do inside.

Four Wands and a Book I Wrote (part of)

These are the four wands I made in one weekend while writing the opening chapter to Making a Wizard's Wand, a Secret-Compartment Box, and More! I had already submitted the text but needed to provide photographs of the various instructions and techniques to the illustrator.

On the left is a small wand of plum wood that features a spherical node above the hilt. At only 8 inches long, the original convex curve of the grip didn't work for the short length. The clumsy grip made it feel like a letter opener. Carving the hilt into a convex grip changed the wand's entire aspect. Now it's ready for a stone setting in the base of the hilt and then oiling.

To the right of that, the wand of aged cedar was created to study the cube component. Of the four seen here, this is the only one that's still in rough draft mode. The entire hilt needs to be thinned and sanded. The added difficulty with this one was shaping the cube around a long scar along the midsection. A little bit of the scar still remains in one of the cube faces. I can either set single stones in each of the four faces or add four of the six dice pips (2-5). Can't decide which way to go.

Third from the left is the long plum wood I carved to photograph the process of creating the spiral. It turned out spectacular. I love this one, especially after adding a thick amethyst cabochon to the base of the hilt. She just needs a name.

The meaty wand on the right is Thrustros, which I've discussed here already. He's now for sale on Etsy.

I found my copy of Making a Wizard's Wand, a Secret-Compartment Box, and More! at the local Barnes&Noble, in the science section of the kid's area. See if you can find it in the photo below.

My name is on the cover (it's Lane Boyd, hi) but not on the online listing (still waiting for that to be updated). Credit due to Loyd, my brother-in-law, who wrote the rest of the book and also who invited me to participate, and to Mike Gray for the fun artwork.

In other news, I'm still waiting for my new Dremel to arrive from Amazon.