Foreword:
Wandlore tends to be a big deal in certain genres of fanfic, but the details of how the wands are actually made are rarely covered. A wandturner with a few standardized core materials and a regular supplier, like Olivander, would probably live a fairly quiet life. However, a more experimental wandturner might have to harvest the materials themselves. Factor in all the weirdness that comes with the multiverse, and the wandturners at Potterwatch would live very exciting lives.
The Wandturner
Are you here for the tour? It doesn't start for another half hour, but I suppose I could get started now. You'll notice I don't have a nametag, and that's completely intentional. I'm afraid the fair folk are after me, and have been for some time. That's why I had to let someone else take over the actual material harvesting. It was worth it, of course. Wood from an ancient hawthorn on a Neolithic burial mound, twelve and a half inches, with a core of nymph sap. That was a fun night for everyone involved, except the hawthorn. This particular wand takes to both the casting of illusions and the opening of doorways literal and metaphysical, but it can be a bit flashy at times. Very easy to attract unwanted spiritual attention with this one. I still haven't found a match, but I've got my fingers crossed.
Over here, you'll find the ordinary cores. Each of these three drawers can deliver phoenix feathers, unicorn hair, or dragon heartstrings according to request. All I have to do is say "Fawkes", and the middle drawer will give me enough feathers to stuff an entire mattress store, all sourced from his alternates. These are what I use most, since our Chosen Ones usually have the classic holly and phoenix feather wand. Lots of replacements to do, although the wand attrition rate has died down now that we've contained Grindelwald to his own reality bundle.
Next up, we have the same setup with more unusual cores. Veela hair, basilisk retina, snorkack horn, and so on. A bit rarer, but they still exist in your typical universe. I'd have a drawer for thestral hair, but if someone has a Deathstick that's actually useful, it's usually indestructible or somehow turns up no matter how many times it's destroyed. Across the room, of course, we have the wood rack. Each of these dowels you see sticking out of the wall is a different kind of wood- we've got all fifty standard wand woods, and a few unusual casings that technically aren't wood at all. Dragon bone, petrified woods, things like that. That cleaver right there in the corner is goblin steel- no wanded magic on it at all, so as to prevent cross-contamination. Whenever I make a wand, I pull the dowel I need out of the wall and cut it off, just like this. They aren't infinitely long- I do have to wait for the tree on the other end of the portal to grow a bit more, but since there's a fairly strong time gradient, it only takes a few hours. If you'll follow me to this next room, I'll show you how I actually make my wands.
This is my four-lathe. What makes it different from a regular lathe is that it's made of meteoric iron, which I'm told is nearly impossible to forge because of all the nickel and stony impurities. These runes on the armature allow it to reach into four-space, letting it carve out the inside of the wand without actually breaking the surface. There's also a four-periscope and a set of four-tweezers to add the core, of course. If you look through the four-periscope and point it at your hand, you can actually see your bones, veins, and muscles moving around in real time. Saint Mungo's uses some of the same equipment, although theirs also magnifies the image. Best not to look for too long- some people get vertigo, even if they aren't squeamish.
Finally, over here we have my special projects. I mentioned the wand that got me trapped in this secure location, but that one actually had fairly normal ingredients. It was just that I harvested from Mab's favorite tree, which to be fair I didn't know at the time. This other wand here is made from the heartroot of a Wroshyr tree, with a core of Starbird feather. Eight and a half inches, very rigid. This is the wand of a healer or gardener. I made it because I was trying to compare the properties of Starbird and phoenix feathers.
My favorite wand? That's obviously my own, vine and phoenix feather. Every other wand just feels strange to me- the magic doesn't fit quite right. In terms of which one I had the most fun making, it would probably be a tie between these two: This one is just willow, with a core that I can't actually identify. The other wand is from a young dendrolith I found while visiting Roshar, with a core of powdered harpy claw. If I absolutely had to choose one of them, I'd choose the willow wand because of the story behind its core.
I wasn't even that far off the beaten path- it was the same reality bundle most of us come from, but in a different plane within that group. Normally planes are straightforward. You summon an elemental creature, and the plane it comes from is mostly that element. I wound up in this particular plane by complete accident while looking through a dead unspeakable's house for any rare objects. I knocked over a jar of what looked like specially treated demiguise tallow, and found myself in a very misty landscape. No real sunlight or anything, but it wasn't dark either. It was pleasantly cool, and the ground was mostly rocks covered in moss. There weren't any other plants to speak of, but the moss actually formed into these weird balls that drifted around with the air currents. It startled the hell out of me when one collided with the back of my neck, that's for sure.
Other than the moss, the plane was very lifeless. About the only animals I saw were these tiny crustaceans hiding in the moss. I'd say they were crabs, but they only had four legs and their claws glowed a weird metallic green color. No, I don't mean iridescent. They could turn the glow on and off, like fireflies. I must have been on that plane for almost an entire day before I saw the little crab things gathering somewhere. I went to investigate and they were eating this long rope of something that had fallen to the ground. I cut a short length off and put it in a bag I had on me, but then I happened to look up and see what the rope had fallen from. I'd solved the mystery of where the light actually came from, but I immediately wished I hadn't, because hovering above me like the world's strangest goodyear blimp was an enormous glowing eye. I say it was an eye, but what really creeped me out was the way the pupil was also a lamprey-mouth filled with baleen. The "ropes" hanging from it were actually feeding tentacles, and it was grabbing the larger balls of moss whenever they floated by.
I wasn't that worried at first, but then it must have thought I was a moss-ball, because it grabbed me. I tried to apparate away in a panic, and that must have been the correct way out of the plane because I appeared back in the unspeakable's house. I kept the length of tentacle as a reminder of my adventure, and eventually used it as the core of that willow wand. Later I checked the same reality bundle, and the plane I visited is only accessible from that house, on the second floor. Everywhere else, the demiguise tallow either led to a black void with colored lights dancing in it, or what looked like an old-growth forest filled with mammoths the size of a terrier. I like that wand, and this story, because it reminds me of how strange the multiverse really is. If you ask my apprentice, I'm sure she'll have more stories for you, since she does the actual ingredient harvesting now.