Make a Wooden Floating Magic Wand

I made one of these wooden, floating magic wands about 10 years ago and wanted to remake the video with better quality and music that wasn’t copyrighted. Hey, we didn’t know any better back then!

I’m using a 5/8″ diameter wooden dowel and am going to cut it to 27 5/16″ :). Then at the hardware store I bought a 5/16″ steel dowel pin to add weight to one side of the wooden dowel.

I’m going to use the same sized drill bit to drill a pilot hole in the end of the wooden dowel. I clamped this to my work table and started by drilling a smaller pilot hole into the wooden dowel to make controlling the larger drill bit easier.

Now I’ll just push the steel dowel pin all the way in then I’m going to use a piece of a smaller wooden dowel to cover the metal pin so it’s invisible ;). I used my mallet to pound both in and used a bit of wood glue for the wooden dowel.

Once the glue is dry you can easily cut off the end of the wand with your table saw.

Now one end will be slightly heavier than the other so your next step to make your wand is to find where your balancing point is. The easiest way to do that is to just slide your finger to the new “center” point of the rod where it will sit level.

Once you find that point, mark about an inch over to the lighter side and drill a small hole all the way through.

Now paint and decorate!

For decorating, you’ll want to splatter some black acrylic paint on your wand, this helps to hide the black string you’ll use to do your magic trick. Try to use very thin thread.

Thread it through and tie a knot.

To use the wand, simply wrap the string around your middle finger a few times and you can wave your hands around and watch it float! Check out my video to see how to do it!