| Making a Wand |
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| Making a wand is the easiest tool that you can make. All its takes is a little imagination and a few basic supplies that you can find anywhere. Here is what you need: 1. A stick - can be cut from a specific tree, like a rowan, oak or ash, etc or can be one that you found laying on the ground somewhere. The length should be from your elbow to your finger tip. The thickness dosn't matter, I have thin wands and a thick one. Also, if you wand to stain it because the bark is peeling and looks bad, the find one with bark that will come off easilly. Or you can leave the bark off if the bark is a nice texture and color. But for this project, lets say you took the bark off. Then move on to the next step. |
| My newest wand |
| 2. Sandpaper. When all the bark is off, take a piece of sandpaper and sand the wand. Make sure it is all smooth and there are no rough spots. 3. Stain. Then take some stain and brush it on the wand. Stain can be found everywhere and its inexpensive for a little can. You can get dark or light stain - whichever you like best. You may want to put 2 coats of stain on to make it darker if you bought a light one. Wait about and hour or so to put the second coat on. |
| 4. Polyurathaine - To make the wand look nice and shiny and to protect it, you will wand to put a coat of polyurathaine on it. This also can be found at any store and is inexpensive. When the stain is dry, brush on a layer of this, let it dry for about and hour then add another coat. The more coats you add the shinier it will be. If you like to woodburn or have wood carving tools, you could do that to the wand after you sandpaper and before you stain. Symbols like stars, goddess signs, runes or anything else like that would look nice on a wand. Also, if you have acrylic paints you could paint the wands with symbols after sandpapering. If you do this, skip the staining and just put a layer or two of polyurathaine over it. |
| The Supplies |
| Top wand is my old Apple wood wand with no stain and the second is a Rose wood wand with no stain. |
| I try to make my wands look as natural as possible without the carvings or paint only because I like the look of natural objects, especially stained wood. |