Wands for Harry Potter Party

So, a few years ago, my oldest son asked for a Harry Potter party. My wife said, “Let’s make wands for each of the kids to take with them.” She showed me some cheeze-doodle pintrest wands made from dowels, paint, and glitter. They weren’t cool. So, I dug into my scrap woods and found a bunch of oak, maple, and cherry slats. I cut them to size and started playing with all my sanders (especially the sanding drum attached to the drill press and my trusty Dremel tool). Well, after 8 hours (and 7 wands completed), I finally asked my wife “how many of these things do we need?” Unfortunately, she had showed some prototypes to church friends and the word got out. We had 24 kids coming. I did the math and tried to figure out a more efficient way to make wands. In the end, I probably spent 20 hours on 28 wands and realized several things – kids really like wands and I needed a more productive creative outlet. Three years later, my kids still have their wands, as do a few kids in the neighborhood (though they are all getting too cool to talk about it). I also had a dozen requests from Facebook friends for wands. My only excuse for saying “no” is that my day job gets in the way. My suggestion is that, if you really need to go crazy and do something silly, build some majestic wands. You can’t go wrong. Finally, if you get your magical wand to work, let me know how. From what I can tell, that Land Rover Defender 110 isn’t going to drive itself into my driveway without something magical happening along the way!

-- Inventor Fisher