On any given day, the quiet sounds of chiseling and sanding can be heard muffled inside a cozy woodworking shed in the backyard of one home in Columbia.
"Oh I've always done little bits of woodworking," says Patrick Burns.
In his shed, the disabled army veteran has found his place of peace. Here, he makes magic wands.
"It's most definitely cathartic," he explains. "You create something beautiful from bits and pieces of scrap. You can create something magical to a child or astounding and interesting to an adult."
That "scrap" he's talking about is actually pieces of scrap wood. This wood has been hand-collected from all over.
Patrick points out pieces of wood drying in a separate shed. "Here's bits of the Crepe Myrtle and Rose of Sharon from last year over here."
Patrick says after he left the army, he had a tough time returning to civilian life.
"I had no real concept of how badly...," Patrick says as he takes a long pause to gather his thoughts. "Prepared I was to go back to the workforce. I was never really off-duty. Going from that, to nothing, it's impossible."
Which is why Patrick turned to his woodworking for respite.
"When I found myself at loose ends and just wanted to keep moving, keep busy," he says.
He also uses the woodworking as a form of physical therapy.
"I've repeatedly broken both of my hands. I've repeatedly broken my wrists, and bits and pieces of my arms and everything else. If I don't keep active, my hands won't work anymore," says Patrick.
So he spends many hours in his little shop, as long as his hands will allow, creating gorgeous custom wands. Every one of the wands is unique, hand-carved and singular from the last one to the next.
"If you come across one of my wands, it's going to be something that no one else will ever have," Patrick says proudly.
"You can find some of his creations at local comic book shop Cosmic Rays on Devine Street. Patrick will also attend local comic conventions to sell his wands. He says the wand picks the owner, and often it's grown-ups that have the hardest time choosing.
"The kids love them. The kids are automatically picking them up and running away with them and casting spells with them before the sale is complete. The adults will spend a half an hour looking at every single wand in the rack, and trying to find the one that fits their hand perfectly, the one that is exactly the one they were thinking of when they dreamed of becoming a wizard. The kids, they just want to pick up the wand and run around and turn their friends into toads," he jokes.
He does use the sale of the wands to help with income, but says that's not what's important.
"I'm going to create the wands whether they sell or not. Worse comes to worse, I end up with too many wands and I end up giving them away to kids," he says.
In his little wood shop, the details are in the art of creation. There, they are in the grain.
Patrick says, "In the end, if someone is interested, and they enjoy my products, if they enjoy my wands, that's all I'm really interested in."
Patrick is currently designing a website for his wands, so that more people can have access to them. And while he creates any type of wand that pops into his head, he is always willing to take custom orders, just in case you have a favorite Harry Potter character.