The solution to your magic wand problem is actually a staff... I love when a dumb trope is the right solution to another. Much like your chopsticks proposal, you are using a device to hold it away from you. The staff puts distance between your hand and the wand which is important when you dealing with limited insulating materials. While the heat of the wand is enough to cause 3rd degree burns, the head of the staff will heat up a lot at the end but much much less at the handle; so, slip the wand into the end of a staff and it's like holding a pot over a flame.

An ideal staff would probably look a lot like the diagram below. The wand itself would be inserted into a glass or high-cone ceramic since these are the most heat resistant materials available in the middle ages. The holster would then be held by a steel head, preferably with seamingly decorative spines loops or other patterns to help it dissipate heat. Then the head would tapper back, thick to thin. The steel closest to the head will get hottest so extra girth will help keep it from melting or warping when it reaches malleable temperatures, but the tapper makes sure that less heat can spread back through the shaft. Then the handle itself would be wooden. Since wood does not propagate heat well, this will further insulate you.

Your castle volcano problem is a bit ridiculous for which you will need a ridiculous staff (aka pike staff), that will put a great as possible distance between caster and wand. More importantly, you need what basically amounts to a ballistic shelter similar to what Davy Crockett crews often used. That much heat will be explosive, and you will be in the blast radius, but if you are protected by a bunker where you are physically underground, the blast will mostly pass over you. The pike staff will be destroyed, but the caster, ducking under the level of the ground and with a shelter to absorb most of the radiant heat might just survive the blast.

Treat the wand like it came from a blacksmith's forge

While some blacksmiths don't use gloves at the forge, others do. And they generally wear them for very short exposures to heat (a wand going whamo should count).

Leather gloves won't be enough to protect against very high heat (fireball spells) but it will protect you from radiant heat near the wand. You also want a leather apron, some kind of safety glasses, and boots.

About the Leather gloves - Experienced blacksmiths will sometimes
recommend no gloves. I strongly recommend a glove on your not-hammer
hand. At least just to start. This will prevent burns. Later, as you
get more experienced with blacksmithing you can decide what you like.

About the boots - This is important because you are going to be
dropping hot pieces of steel and you want a solid pair of boots to
protect your feet from burns. If you plan on handling heavy pieces of
iron and steel then I would go with steel-toed shoes.

So lots of safety gear to start then you can reduce it when you get used to spellcasting.

This site also recommends wolf jaw tongs (not plain jaw/flat). I'd recommend some made special to firmly hold your wand near the base. If blacksmiths can use these to hold on to heavy metal glowing like a miniature sun, and then be able to manipulate the metal on the anvil, you can use them to hold your freaking wand still while you cast.

Remember, the apron and boots and eye coverings (if possible) are for when you are an idiot and drop the hot wand as soon as something blasts out of it.

Okay, so this covers you for basic fireballs. Now, what about the Sheeeaaaaah-Moogatee-Hah! spell?

Okay, this requires some setup. I recommend the following:

• A large barrel made of thick oak plated with metal with a 3-4 inch hole drilled near the top.


• Fill with water such that it will later reach up to the bottom of the hole.


• Get in the barrel with something protective on your head.


• Put on a leather glove.


• Stick your blacksmithing tongs out the hole and grab the wand.


• Make sure that under the wand is a bucket of water or a pile of sand.


• Cast the spell.


• Drop the wand.

Alternatively...fire that sucker from a stone castle window or rampart, the kind archers shoot out of. Have a trusted running retrieve the wand after it drops in the water/sand and is cool enough to pick up with tongs or a gloved hand.

No, it's not melee-worthy like your fireball and other low to high level spells are. But if you want the nuclear option, you need to build a launch point. This completely violates your requirements, but seriously, do soldiers with fire launchers run around with them in combat? No, they use a sturdy base, sometimes one that is somewhat portable. If you fight with a cannon can you carry it in your pocket then pull it out and boom? Nope.

Remember, your question was protection for a fireball spell. And you state: "casting the fireball spell generates enough heat to cause 3rd degree burns on the unprotected hand and wrist." My solution easily protects against that.

Do what every successful business has ever done with hard to crack problems: outsource it.

In order to outsource the problem of hot wands, you will need:

• feathers


• a bow

See a picture below of some witches invoking some explosive fireballs (you know, the kinda that goes boom when it hits something). Notice that they are grasping the wand firmly with the right hand, while grasping the bow with the left hand.

Once the wand flies, the problem has been successfully outsourced to whomever you were aiming your fireball at. Any heating concerns are now SEP's (Someone Else's Problem).

And before you tell me that goes against the melee usage rule: you can use an arrow on a melee fight if you really want.

Freeze it

Before using the wand, freeze it. In a combat situation, this will involve frequent wand switches. Take a tub of ice with you. Store all your wands in the ice, so they are nice and cold. Put on a good pair of gloves. Reach into the tub and grab a wand. Aim and shout the appropriate spell. Immediately drop the wand back into the ice. If your hand is overheated, stick it in the ice. Repeat with the next wand when your hand starts getting cold.

In the thirteenth century your source for ice would be the top of a mountain. Take a hay covered wagon up the mountain to where it gets cold. Make a hole in the center of the hay. Put ice in the hole. Lots of ice. Cover it up with hay from the sides. By the time you get to the bottom of the mountain, you'll have less ice.

Stuff the wands in the ice at any time, even while still at the top of the mountain. You want them to get as cold as possible so that you can maximize the safe power of the spell.

I have an answer, but I'm not sure if it breaks the rules or not it goes against the rules on two fronts - drilling holes in the wand (thanks JBH) and violates the 13^th century rules (thanks Nosajimiki). But, I'm going to throw it out there anyway as an apocryphal answer.

First of all, you're completely right; this is a classic heat sink problem. But, you're also wrong; a gun barrel heats up because of convection from the gases in the gun barrel; the barrel itself is metal for strength, and also because you actually want the barrel to get hot so that the next bullet doesn't discharge prematurely because of a massive heat buildup in the rifle. This was the whole point of gatling guns back in the day; give each barrel time to cool down before being used to fire another bullet.

In point of fact, the whole problem you have with your wand in terms of thermodynamics is that it isn't like a gun barrel, which would make better sense. What you really want to do is conduct the heat away quickly so that it an dissipate in the atmosphere rather than cooking your hand. This is also why gun stocks and handles are not made of metal - They're designed out of wood, pearl, composites, etc. to shield your hand from the excess heat buildup.

I'm going to assume that your wand is some form of magical wood or other element that traps the heat to insane levels without spontaneously combusting. That is about the only model which could work the way you describe, although it also means that the biggest issue with your wand isn't that it gets hot, it's that it doesn't cool down fast enough. That said, the solution is twofold; firstly you need to reinvent a 'stock', or wand handle, and then you need to borrow an ammunition concept from science fiction.

Put more simply, you need to insulate the hand AND absorb the heat out of the wand fast enough so as not to overwhelm the insulative properties of the stock which you use to grip.

Let's deal with the stock first. If it wasn't for their combustible nature, wood or paper would actually make a good option here. But, in this instance, I'm going to suggest a fibrelass handle with a styrofoam core. This would have several benefits;

. You can turn this into a simple collar or tube which your wand slides into

. The styrofoam will grip the wand quite well, meaning less chance of it slipping out in a fight

. Easily replaceable if the styrofoam starts to wear.

Secondly, we need to create something like a thermal clip for your wand. Basically, the idea of a thermal clip in scifi games is that we have all moved to energy weapons, but those weapons can't disperse their heat so they capture it in a disposable thermal clip, which basically stores the heat and can be replaced quickly in battle. In gaming the idea is to keep the idea of ammunition. In your scenario, it's actually a pretty good analogue for the problem you face.

I'm going to suggest that you drill a small hole down the centre line of your wand (hence the idea that it could be outside the rules) and put a small rod of something like Tungsten in it, with a screw thread on the back end. Why tungsten? Because it has the highest melting point but still pretty good thermal conduction properties. Then what you need is a supply of Liquid N₂ bulbs that screw or clip on at the base of the wand.

The idea would be that the tungsten conducts the heat to the bulb, which absorbs the heat and converts the nitrogen back to gas. Once it has done that to all the nitrogen in the bulb, you discard and replace.

Now, I know this isn't a perfect solution; how do you keep your N₂ bulbs cold in the field? How many shots can a nitrogen bulb acting as a thermal clip absorb? Seriously, you want me to insert what in my wand? How is that going to affect the magical properties?

I suggest that you get one of your friends who wants to be a 'level 6' magician to assist you with some field trials (preferably one you don't like very much) but ultimately, the engineering of this is quite simple - you need to dissipate heat quickly while insulating your hand from it until the heat has dissipated.

For that reason, gun barrels getting hot is actually a good thing; it's touching them that's bad. Your wand needs a similar dynamic. Putting a styrofoam / fibreglass grip around it will hopefully protect your hand while the 'thermal clip' sucks as much of the excess heat out as quickly as it can, reducing the load on the insulated grip.

In any case, be very careful during your testing and don't let anyone do this who will be indispensable in your future magical career.

Sand/Water Cooling

The Heat dissipation doesn't need to be a function of the wand itself. If the user's hands are themselves insulated, they can use traditional cooling techniques. A wand user can carry classical cooling systems as part of their kit. Since I presume this wand doesn't need ammunition, if you equip them similar to a medieval fusilier they can carry sand cartridges/water pouches instead of ammo