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Like many folks, I have that box in my closet filled with cables that I keep “just in case.” Today I decided to go through that box and toss out the stuff that I knew was obsolete or that I’d never use again.

Sure, there was the usual batch of BNC cables and excess power cords. But at the bottom of the box was something I’d forgotten: The electronics parts I purchased when I was building my Wizard’s staff.

Here I am holding staff back in 1990, when I came in costume to work at Halloween in 1990.

The staff is made from segments from Torchiere lamps; the metal rings are from scrap aluminum tubing. The bottom segment contains batteries (four D cells) and electronics. The remaining segments contain wiring running the length of the staff. At the top, just below the quartz crystal, is a Maglite bulb.

The way the circuit worked is that if you touched any adjacent pair of rings, the lamp under the crystal would turn on. It was an amazingly bright effect, especially indoors or at night.

The circuit was always finicky. The main problem was keeping electrical connectivity between those aluminum rings and copper wires. Soldering copper to aluminum is hard, because the aluminum conducts the heat away so rapidly. I’ve only seen it done by an experienced welder with a very hot torch.

I never found a way to keep that connection stable. I tried different kinds of tape and glues, including conducting epoxy. The copper wires would always come loose.

When I first built the staff, it was fairly reliable. A few years later I pulled it out to try to resurrect it, but even with fresh batteries it was hard to get it work again. A few times through the years I tried to get working again, usually for some costume party, but never fully succeeded.

Now that I’m wrapping up my first Maker project (I’ll continue the A/C saga soon), I might try to make the staff work again. It’s been almost 30 years, and there have been considerable advances in electronics and materials. I still have resistors, transistors, capacitors, and other miscellaneous parts from the bottom of that box.

I don’t have any particular events to bring the staff to, since LARPs and Ren Faires are in my past for now. But it would be nice if I could pick it up at a moment’s notice and use a crystal to light my way.