Wizard Stuff

Bradley Gannon

2025-11-06

TL;DR: I made some wizard stuff. This is pretty far from my usual projects, but it was surprisingly fun and mildly interesting. I promise I haven’t completely lost it.

A small, flat stone rests on top of a fence railing and against one of the posts. It has a symbol drawn in dark ink that looks like a less-than and a greater-than sign facing each other, except they are offset so their “jaws” interlock. — This symbol is the Elder Futhark rune Jēran, which is thought to mean “good harvest”. I’ve set it on my garden fence, which seems like the most reasonable home for it.

Three simple symbols in black ink on a flat-faced rock that is wider than it is tall. The symbols are arranged in a row, and the rock is resting on the side of a tree stump after some rain. — These three symbols are, from left to right, Othala, Wynn, and Algiz. Their names refer to the concepts of heritage (in the sense of land or home), joy, and protection.

A sanded, lightly colored wooden staff, maybe an inch and a half across, being held upright in a field on a sunny day. A inscription has been burned into the wood and is partially visible. — It’s surprisingly difficult to photograph a long stick. This is a close-up view of one of the inscriptions I made on the staff, which is a transcription of my full name in Tengwar script (so people know who it belongs to 😉).

A rock with a flat face rests on a bed of moss and pine needles on top of a stone wall. The rock has several symbols drawn around its edge in dark ink, and a knot is drawn in the center. — A miniature imitation of much larger historical runestones. The runes around the edge spell out `gud luk hab fun`, which is my Elder Futhark rendering of “good luck, have fun”.

A round stone with concentric black rings emanating from a central dot. The rings extend beyond the edges of the stone and out of view. The stone rests on top of a recently cut tree stump. — No particular significance or historical reference. I just think the design is neat. It wraps around to the other side, which makes the two poles roughly antipodal. I call this the “zebra stone”.

There isn’t much to say about the tools and procedures I tried for this short project. I went out and found some stones that seemed promising, and I brought them inside and washed them. Then I tried using my rotary tool to engrave them, but that didn’t really work. I don’t know anything about geology, but I imagine if I did then I’d be able to identify rocks that are softer. In the end I just used a black marker, which I think gives a decent effect from moderate distance.

For the staff, I stomped around in the woods for a while until I found two pieces of dead wood that were reasonably straight, roughly the right length and width, and not substantially rotted. I brought them in and cut them to length (7’). Then I focused more on one, removing all bark and sanding it smooth. I used low-grit paper at first (200 I think?), followed by 400. A duct taped sanding block was useful here. Then I used my soldering iron set to 375 F with a chisel tip to burn the designs into the wood. I sketched portions of the design with pencil first to give myself a guide. I found it difficult to get smooth strokes out of this setup, but again it came out good enough from a distance. There’s still room for more designs, so I’ll probably add more in the future when I feel like it and maybe eventually seal the wood with some kind of waterproof coating.

Two sticks lay on a concrete floor with some tools nearby. A tape measure extends parallel to them and indicates that they are about seven feet long. — Two candidate sticks

The designs themselves come from two sources. The rocks have Elder Futhark runes, and the staff has Tengwar script. I like both because they give the impression of powerful, ancient writing regardless of what the writing actually means. (See photo captions above.) The rock with runes around the edge is my attempt at mimicking the style of Viking Age runestones in miniature. I like to imagine that a precocious child of that period could have made something similar. The knot design in the center has no particular significance, but it’s vaguely similar to some of the designs in the centers of the various real runestones I saw online.

I did briefly try to make an orb, which was actually my original goal for this project. Sometime in the last few months I found this meme, and that eventually led me to /r/wizardposting, all of which I find fun. I wanted to make a glowing orb like in the meme, and my plan was to print a sphere in white PLA and insert a coil of wire with some blue LEDs mid-print. A transmitting coil outside the orb would then transfer energy to the coil via inductive coupling. This avoids the need for batteries or any holes in the orb, and it gives a spooky effect by only causing the orb to glow when it’s near the coil (which could be hidden).

I discarded this idea for two reasons. One is that making a sphere turned out to be harder than I expected with my current tools. Printing is really my only option, and I don’t think I would have been able to reliably hide the layer lines. The other reason is that I wasn’t convinced that I could transmit enough power over a far enough gap without a lot of effort. This is all based on quick estimates, and it seems like there are plenty of projects elsewhere that have achieved similar (or better) results, so maybe I’ll revisit the glowing orb project in the future.