Wands, wandlore are some of the coolest (and most magical) parts of Harry Potter imo. Wood, length and core are central to a wand's identity, but how do you guys imagine the process? I can't say I've ever seen a truly fascinating wand crafting scene in any fanfiction. How does Ollivander do it? Gregorovitch?

 

I don't think theres ever been any explicit mention of the way wands are crafted in canon, so this is pretty much my head-canon.

The wood used for the wand should be taken from a tree grown in a magical environment, whilst the wand core should be taken from the creature willingly, and not forcibly taken.

It is my personal belief that each and every tree and each and every magical creature has a different temperament, and as such, the wand-maker should note down the creature's personality after acquiring the core.

One should see as to whether or not the personalities of the wand core and wand wood compliment each other i.e. an angry phoenix and a tall oak tree being a big 'No, no'.

About the actual crafting itself, I have to be honest here, I have no fucking idea as to how they fit an entire feather inside a cylindrical wood barely half a centimeter wide.

 

, well I guess after seeing people split their own souls and resurrecting the dead I shouldn't be that disbelieving of a feather fitting in a small area.

 

I guess the wand is bigger on the inside?

It'd probably fit anyway once you remove all the barbs. All three core types are fairly long and straight.

 

It's a little hard to get heartstring out of a dragon willingly, but I guess it's good to try that too...

 

Okay I admit I should have rephrased that statement and made an exception for dragons. Maybe one could only take the heartstring after the dragon has died of natural causes?

 

Goddamn is that one good wand crafting method. You know I think I won't be the only one here that would appreciate a fic that revolves around wands, without it being 'oooh, basilisk blood' and 'Elder wood? Awesommeee!'.

Hint there peeps

 

I think wand crafting is a little like woodwork with magic, at least as far as the wood portion is concerned. The core is introduced either during or before the process of shaping the wand by, of course, magic.

I remember reading a fic in which, Harry makes a wand with iron tools and on showing it to Ollivander he says that iron acts like a sort of insulator to magic, prohibiting its flow. Maybe the tools used too may make a difference.

 

Romulus Augustulus. That iron part is probably taken from many Arthurian legends. Iron is the one mortal thing that harms faeries, and faeries are magical. So it does make sense.

 

Personally I would love if the processes was very similar to the creation of a lightsaber, the different materials all floating around before being joined together.

 

For identifying the wood, I would imagine that the presence of Bowtruckles would be the best (if not only) indicator used to select wand-grade wood.

 

Perhaps certain wand cores are outlawed in the wizarding world. Even if one chooses to ignore Pottermore, its canon that there are more wand cores than just the three Ollivander uses (e.g. Veela hair and Thestral hair). I think that those fanon wand cores like Basilisk scale, Werewolf fur, and whatever stupid ones are popular nowadays in fanfic COULD be used in wands, but it might be illegal to do so (be it just in Magical Britain or as an international wizarding law).

Assuming that the creature which said core belonged to didn't already kill the wandmaker for their attempt at taking part of their body. I doubt the likes of Gregorovitch would try risking their lives to get a piece of a Chimera or Manticore since odds are the wand core isn't good enough to risk his life for it.

We know there are Unforgivable Curses, so maybe there are certain wand cores that no wand maker ever uses due to the dark negative side-effects of the wand, or if the wand promotes a certain dark aspect. To make a wand with an illegal wand core would naturally result in said wand maker being arrested. For example, a wand that is only good for casting curses and other powerful dark magic might be outlawed, or any wand core that hurts or manipulates the wand's wielder.

What good could come from a wand that is only good at making the Unforgivable Curses easier to cast? There might even be a specific wand/core combination that prevents its caster from using a certain spell, or even from using non-verbal spells, so those combinations are never used. For example, it would be really unfortunate if a person's wand was literally unable to cast a Patronus purely because they are using a specific wand/core combo.

While some may dismiss a wand just because it wasn't an Ollivander wand and has a wood/core unlike anything from Ollivanders, it doesn't automatically make it bad writing or the character an Sue/Stu in fanfic. Unless they got the wand from Ollivander in which case that's just stupidity (if you want a non-standard wood and/or core, just have the character get the wand from a different wand maker). Gregorovitch would obviously use woods and cores that Ollivander doesn't purely because each wand maker does things differently. Thestral hair might be more common with other wand makers for instance, and its not like Thestrals themselves are a rare species. Maybe Ollivander believes that Thestral hair core for a wand is too hard for a young witch or wizard to handle, whereas other wand makers think differently.

Another thing is that the whole "the wand chooses the wizard" is an Ollivander thing, specifically Garrick Ollivander. Meaning that if a character gets a wand from somewhere other than Ollivanders, they could probably just walk into the store and ask for a specific wood and wand combination that the wand maker is known to use (e.g. Elm with dragon heartstring, etc). This is because Ollivander believes that a specific wand works best with a wizard and that other wands won't work as well as the one soul-mate wand. Whereas other wandmakers don't abide by that custom, though I imagine Ollivander might have influenced a foreign wand maker or two so that maybe some wand makers do things the Ollivander way out of respect/idolisation for him.

Though when it comes to American wandmakers:

Here there is a wandmaker known for one specific wand core, a Thunderbird tail feather. This suggests that wandmakers in other countries would use wand cores and woods related to their country of origin. So Asian wandmakers might use wand woods based on trees native to Asia and wand cores based on Chinese/Japanese/etc mythological creatures.

Again, a wandmaker famous for one wand core, but they use many cores. These wands seem more like the wands from the movies (most notably Voldemort's wand) in that these wands would look aesthetically enhanced and not just a plain piece of wood with a core inside. They might have fancy handles, or jewel-incrusted or golden handles. It seems like they are more focused on the wand's cosmetic design than its magical practicality.

Perhaps students attending Mahoutokoro would ask for a wand with the prestigious Cherry blossom as its wand wood, or how some other wands (Silver Lime and Elm) would be wanted purely for their reputation, regardless of whether those wands are even the best choice for the customer.

This proves that certain wand core combinations can go "extinct" if the knowledge of how to use those cores dies out. In that sense, wandmaking is like cooking since there are recipes to each wand/core combination. So perhaps there are wand cores that existed hundreds of years ago but are no longer used due to either the magical creature going extinct or because no living person knows how to make those type of wands.

Finally this shows that wand cores of dangerous or dark creatures can be used as wandcores... if dragon heartstring wasn't evident enough already. The fanon idea of wands specifically tailored to dark magic obviously exist since I imagine there since each wand core has different specialities, there has to be at least one wand core that is good for dark magic. However I imagine that they are uncommon with wandmakers.

Just imagine how dangerous it would be to get a wandcore of a Manticore, a Werewolf, a Chimera, or especially a Basilisk wand core. In theory a wand core could have a Basilisk scale/heartstring/etc but it would be so dangerous and deadly that I imagine no wand maker would ever risk there lives trying to get one. Especially since most of those creatures are rare, and finding a dead one (or rarer, killing one) would be even less likely without supreme amounts of luck. I imagine after several ameteur wandmakers died trying to get a Werewolf/Basilisk/Sphinx/etc wandcore, wandmakers generally agreed that certain creatures aren't worth the danger going after. This could explain Ollivander's choice of dragon heartstring, Phoenix feather and Unicorn hair.

 

I would suppose that the art of the wandmaker varies very much between practitioners. So, Ollivander continues the tradition of his ancestors, who were wandmakers themselves. Ollivander has his own methods and theories, and other wandmakers have theirs. For instance, it's noted both in the books and on Pottermore that Ollivander disagrees to some extent with Gregorovitch's approach to wandmaking. Exactly what these disagreements amount to is unclear, and perhaps only of interest to the wandmakers themselves.

Here follow some possible aesthetic differences, none of which are canonic.

1. Ollivander's approach is minimalistic. Accordingly, Ollivander aims for elegance in simplicity for his designs. He carefully carves the wood to bring about the patterns in figuration he desires. Ollivander's philosophy would be that the art of the wandmaker is to realize and bring into focus the magic already present in his material; the closest Muggle equivalent would be sculpturing.

2. Gregorovitch, in contrast, believes that the essence of magic is the wizard imposing his will upon reality, which is reflected in the practice of his art. Gregorovitch wands are adorned with runes and other arcane symbols, and infused with paints and dyes extracted from magical plants and creatures. Gregorovitch regards the wood of the wand as more of a canvas, a medium to support his artistry.

3. A third tradition, particular to certain wandmaker-families on the continent, is an emphasis on the idea of the wand as tool or means of expression for the wizard. The wandmakers of this tradition would search for woods that have been used for some grand purpose. For instance, perhaps a certain maple tree yielded an exquisite Stradivarius violin; wood from the same tree might therefore, according to this tradition, be suitable for an artistically-inclined witch or wizard. Or, Odin's spear Gungnir was fashioned from the wood of the mighty ash tree Yggdrasil; wand made from the same tree would be perfect for a warrior. The closest Muggle art for this tradition might be poetry or symbolic literature.

There are of course many more possible approaches. The only thing I would say more is that it's meaningless to ask which approach is "better" for wandmaking: in what sense could the paintings Picasso and Monet possibly be "better" than the music of Bach and Mozart, or the sculptures of Michaelangelo and Bernini? Of course, a sculptor might prefer his art to another's, as Ollivander prefers his methods to Gregorovitch's, but in the end, it's the level of the artistry and craft itself that matters, not the means of expressing it.

Those are my thoughts on the matter.

 

Wrote this up in planning for a fic about Ollivander's post-war apprentice. Take it for what it's worth:

wand making basics:
⦁ wand wood collected from the field is later pruned down to suitable starting stock

⦁ a worthy limb is chosen, a cut made along its length down to the center but no further

⦁ Using Swelling solution as a marinade, the branch is allowed to spread open and enlarge until the layers of wood separate into sheets of thin bark. At least three layers of bark need to be intact

⦁ Runic inscriptions are transcribed from a large volume of accumulated enchantments, then burned into the bark. The runes represent known spell formulae [outerleaf], basics of casting language [midleaf], and the invocations necessary to bond that specific core material strand into the whole and give it a sense of balance [innerleaf]

⦁ On the right night (usually in the same span as the source wood's astrological phase, but there are exceptions), the core is lain into the meticulously-aligned layers of bark and the whole is sealed and shrunk back together into the base wand

⦁ Assuming the sealing process was successful, the wandmaker trims and engraves the outer surface to make it stable, durable, and recognizable. Elements of the outer crafting may influence the resultant personality, much as our own appearance and senses inform our development

⦁ The wand is tested through casting a variety of spells, including a few that aren't part of the spell library to ensure that the language features have integrated properly

⦁ The new wand is varnished, polished and otherwise coddled for a time, until it is ready to adopt a suitable carrier

The libraries of spells and languages are fairly universal- those have been shared openly for centuries and can be readily stripped out of an existing wand (at the loss of the wand...). Different wandmakers distinguish their manufacture in selection of source woods and cores, core linking formulas and the recipe for varnish used. Well-known wandmakers include a signature rune set amongst the spell library that aids in unifying the layers into a stable personality and ensuring lifelong resiliency.

 

wordhammer. Goddamn that's a good (complex) wand making way.

Lunanight. My apologies if I sound rude, but HOLY SHIT THAT TEXT WALL is making things hard to read. If you could put a space or two in the originally formed paragraph's, it would be much appreciated; otherwise, from the content aspect, you have wonderful points and ways of creating a wand.

Daidalos. That's an interesting way of looking at things. If you don't mind, would you allow me to use this process in a fic I'm writing. Totally understand if you don't.

 

Myrrdin Emrys,

Feel free to use it however you want.

 

Daidalos.

Many thanks to you, Daidalos.

 

I've always imagined some sort of magical infusion process to bond the core with wood. Any derpy wizard could get some rare magic material and stick it in a shaft of wood. It's the bonding process that requires the finesse and skill of a wandmaker. Different wandmakers have different bonding spells, and those bonding spells are closely guarded trade secrets, which explains why certain wandmakers are more succesful and renowned than others.

Also provides an explanation as to why certain core/wood combinations are better for different disciplines of magic. Each core would logically fuse with different woods in different ways.

The elder wand could essentially just be a perfect fusion of materials bound with an uber powerful spell.