Wand cores

Happy Spring everyone!

It’s a beautiful day here in our neck of the woods and the topic of conversation today is about wand cores… Yes, MUCH too popular belief, I spend many, MANY, hours of phone discussions with our young customers, their parents, and all of the other customers who range in between on this subject and am always interested in everyone’s ideas on it. Now if you’re newer fan into this Magickal realm or if and would like to learn everything there is to know and then-some from the world of all things HP, seat yourself next to a hardcore HP fan and you’ve got your own personal harrypotter.wikia.com pocket of knowledge. But be prepared to have A LOT of time to kill… and they’ll gnaw your ear off for hours —They’re what we at Magical Alley playfully like to call the ‘HP connoisseurs’…And of course, then we’ve got our older, more mature, shall I say, Nana and Granddad’s ranged customers.

So as you can see, after 13 yrs. of magic wands, black cat and broomstick show, I have found myself immersed in this interesting topic of conversation more times than I can, shall I say, ‘shake a wand stick at.’ The beautiful part about being a fantasy artist and author, is you’re allowed to create your fictitious world to be any way you want it to be. There won’t be the giant proverbial thumb pressing down upon your forehead, with the nasty naysayers telling you that your ideas are illogical…like ‘no one has ever REALLY seen a dragon; therefore, they do not exist in the real world.’

GAH! I’ve met MANY dragons! Oh don’t get me started here! Feel sorry for these people. Something traumatic must have happened to them to make them stop believing in all things magickal… like perhaps their little tooth-faeries might have been ill that day or had bad GPS directions and got lost on the way to the house of of one of these people whom lost one of their little chompers… One never can tell you know… it could have happened.

You see, in the wonderful world of fantasy, you’ve got permission to just pick and choose from the places in your imagination whether it be from the real world and or your own and then let it just roll off your paintbrush onto the blank canvas. With this being said, this is exactly how I feel about wand cores too and THIS should be the only set of rules to go off of when it comes to what you believe should go inside of your wand.

Now with eating, living, breathing, discussing all things Magical Alley, HP, Fantastic Beasts, fantasy art, witches’ tea parties, sock stealing faeries, nose picking goblins, Mischief the sticky fingered sprite and his naughty bff, partner in crime Mayhem the crow (the nab-n-grab twins) oh don’t let me go on!

Oh yes… where was I? I believe that a wand core should be and could be more than what has been truly is defined. It’s not all just about the ‘fantastic world of Ms. Rowling’s imagination that have been enticing and exciting the young and older generations of followers for the past two decades now.

You see, at Magical Alley, we’ve been approached to work with other things besides your usual phoenix feathers, unicorn tail hairs and dragon heartstrings…

We’ve actually placed real beloved items into the cores of peoples’ wands. Here are some of the following items just to name a few:

Pet cat whiskers

Pet dog fur

Guitar strings

Ashes of the loved ones – making memorial wands

Horse tail-hairs from deceased beloved horses

Fortune cookie papers

Tiny luck charms

Crushed crystal/s for protection

Pet bird feathers

Magick beans… could be; we didn’t ask…?

Now, once we’ve received these beloved items, the chamber is sealed completely shut. There’s a very important reason why we seal this. Now I realize that there are other wand company’s out there that offer the ‘hidden chamber’ where the Pommel has a little corkscrew style lid so the wand owner can have the option of placing different special items down inside of the core.

Now here’s the reason why leaving the wand core open is a bad idea and shouldn’t be done.

The ‘wood-craftsman’ technique is called a tap-n-spire. It makes grooves in the wood so both the pommel and the handle can screw and unscrew apart. The first few tries seem really brilliant! You can remove the pommel top and place your little hidden goodies down inside of your wand and screw it back on – it’s really fun. But the fun doesn’t last. But the threads on your little pommel are really delicate and will crumble quickly, especially if the wood of your wand is a domestic softwood.

So after using it to open and shut a few times that little plug won’t fit properly anymore; it’s going to wobble and fall off. So now you’ve got a wand which not only doesn’t hold your secret items inside and doesn’t hold the very top of your pommel. So it’s ruined. It looks horrible and you’ve just spent your hard earned money for something which won’t stay together. So then when you try to glop a bunch of glue down inside of the whole it’s an even bigger mess.

If you’re the owner of one of these wands and you’ve got this problem, please contact me. It’s easy as a wink; all you have to do is just send me an image of your wand so I can give you an estimate at how much it’ll cost for us to fix it for you. It’s a small pric

e to pay, but we can at least get your wand sorted out. Please put ‘wand core’ in the heading of the email so I can easily find it.

Send your emails to me to Terie at ask-me@magicalalley.com or call me at (360) 277-4150.