It is really easy to make a wand - it's just a stick or a hunk of dowel, after all. Every once in a while I am commissioned to make a new one. I really don't care where the old ones go. After a recent toy cleanup (donating now-too-babyish ones, etc) I was a little surprised to notice how many he had commissioned over the years – there's a few there on the left.
They have auctions at his school every so often where kids bring in crafts or baked goods to “sell”. The “money” to buy the stuff is earned throughout the semester as a reward for good behavior, so they end up swapping this money around quite a bit – additional money is printed as needed. I try not to question it too much, because when I do stir that pot, (admittedly Scotch-fueled) phrases like “serious currency devaluation issue” and “socialist agenda” and “some sort of Ponzi Scheme, I'll betcha anything” come bubbling to the surface. Anyway, I had made other things to sell before so I figured this time “Why not magic wands?”
And like so many other simple projects I think up it quickly snowballed from “let's quickly cut and sand a handful of sticks and call it a day” to “let’s recreate Olivander’s because that's exactly what a completely sane person would think and do”. That “stretch goal” was never met, probably cuz those squirrels ain’t gonna chase themselves, you know. Oh, wait. They do.
What was I talking about?
Ah… Using one 2x4 lauan plyboard sheet and some pine scrap, I found I could make 12 lidded wand boxes, as long as the overall wand length was kept to 10“and the width and depth of each box was kept to about 2”.
Twenty-four square 1 ½ (well… nearly) blocks were cut from scrap ¾” pine for the box ends. I dadoed slots into the box sides at just the right height where the lids could slide into place. I was a little nervous about that part –the thin flexible plyboard might shatter, could I get the depth right, etc. it turned out ok.
Why the “nearly” above? To keep cuts and assembly as simple as possible all lids, bottoms, and sides were cut to the same dimensions (about 2”x12”). Taking into account the number of cuts needed and the width of the blade itself was important to maximize yield. This made the box widths slightly smaller than 2”. Only the lids needed to be “post processed” to get them to slide in. This required twelve more cuts that shaved their widths down just enough so they could slide into the slots after assembly.
With the help of a staple gun, assembly was a snap. By gluing and stapling the box ends to one of the sides, the bottom and the other side could be quickly attached in the same way – no measuring or marking necessary and I didn’t need infinity-minus-one wood clamps to do the work. While the glue dried I trimmed the lids and slid them into place. After the glue dried I removed the staples and sanded and stained the pieces and parts to give everything an aged look.
I wanted to line the inside of the box with felt but I knew that properly cutting and gluing material was not going to end well regardless of the amount of time I took to do it. I ended up wrapping scrap ¾ “plyboard pieces in blue craft felt and hot- gluing this bit to the box bottoms. This method brought the wand closer to the lid and gave the boxes some heft as a nice plus. I still felt like something was missing so I added the little labels you see there.
Overall, I would say I put about $10-$12 into the entire project, and I now know how to make boxes with slide-out lids. I think that these could go for ten fake dollars each... seriously upsetting the already precarious economic balance in the classroom if they all sold... laying the groundwork for violent revolution.
Man… It's a good thing these things don't actually function...
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