Thomas Nakagawa is no wizard, but there is magic in what he does.
His hand-carved wooden wands enchant all who stop by Ye Olde Wizard’s Wand Shoppe, his booth at the weekly Maui Swap Meet and at craft fairs throughout the year.
He said, "The kids invariably asked me, ‘Does this really work?’"
Nakagawa, 71, was just a kid himself when he started using a pocketknife to carve into bamboo and guava sticks while growing up in Haiku, Maui. While stationed aboard a Navy destroyer in the 1960s, he passed the time by working on bas relief carvings. And when he retired in 2008 after 23 years as a telescope operator for the Boeing Co., working at the Haleakala observatories, he was still carving — mostly art-quality canes and other utilitarian items.
Then a buddy asked Nakagawa to make a wand for his daughter that resembled the magical instrument belonging to "Harry Potter" character Hermione Granger. The "brightest witch of her age" uses one with a floral vine design.
Nakagawa recalls he didn’t know what to make of the request. "At the time I was only making canes. I thought, ‘I can’t make this.’ Then I stared at it for a couple of weeks and started," he said.
Two thousand wands later, Nakagawa continues to conjure up the handcrafted sticks in his Wailuku woodshop.
He uses scraps of koa and other native and exotic hardwoods such as mango, purpleheart and eucalyptus that he gets from cabinetmakers and other sources. Basic woodworking tools such as a table saw, belt sander and router shape the scraps into wands, but he finishes the more detailed ones by hand.
It takes Nakagawa only about 10 minutes to create a plain wand like the one used by Potter’s best friend Ron Weasley, and up to two hours for a "unicorn horn" wand and other more elaborate pieces. He can add custom grips and handles, and using his skills in pyrography, the art of decorating wood and other materials with burn marks, Nakagawa can embellish the wands with symbols, designs and names.
Prices range from $5 to $40. His most expensive fantasy piece was an 18-inch scepter topped with a tiger’s eye orb set in three koa-wood dragon claws and wrapped in leather. It sold for $250.
While confessing he does not read a lot of fantasy fiction, Nakagawa isn’t above dressing up in a pointy hat and velvet robe — usually at the prodding of his wife, Alice — as Ye Olde Wizard Galanto, who makes "wands for every spellcaster." He is careful to point out that he does not market his handiwork under the Harry Potter brand. But most of Nakagawa’s customers reference the characters from J.K. Rowling’s wildly popular book and movie franchise when choosing or ordering wands. And he’s learned they can be very particular.
"A little girl asked me where the secret compartment was," said Nakagawa, referring to the hollow core in the "Potter" wands that contain phoenix feathers, dragon heartstrings and other mythical materials.
"I looked at her and said, ‘What secret compartment?’ She said, ‘Obviously you haven’t read the books.’
"What a put-down."
But he listened, and now makes versions with "secret compartments."
As for his wizard name, Nakagawa said it’s a childhood nod to Sir Galahad, a valiant knight of King Arthur’s Round Table.
"When I was a kid my parents brought me up to be a gentleman. I would open the door for my mom and when a lady entered the room you stood up — all the things people don’t do any more," he laughed.
The nickname stuck.
Despite his wand wizardry, Nakagawa likes to showcase his canes, which range in price from $100 to $800. He also makes hair picks, shoehorns, business card holders, pen sets, crosses for jewelry and home decor, and earrings, and embellishes bamboo backscratchers by burning hibiscus, whales, sharks and other island motifs into the handles.
Now back to that momentous question: "Does it really work?"
"I tell them it does if they work hard at it. After all, Harry went to school for seven years," Nakagawa said.
Then he paused to give it a little more thought.
"The mana of the wand, the effort I put into it, makes it work."
Contact Thomas Nakagawa by calling 808-280-3836 or visit www.alohacane.com.
