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.

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