Paranormal ProductsInstruments, made by one hand since 2003
III · Board Planchettes

Glide, show, weigh

A pointer for the talking board that does the three things a pointer is for, and fits any board ever made, mine or another's.

The NeedleThree Jobs

A pointer has three jobs: to glide, to show, and to weigh. The plastic one that comes in the box does none of them.

To glide it needs feet that neither scrape nor skid. Scraping stalls the pointer on the grain of the board and the sitters push through it, which means every push is theirs. Skidding lets it run, so it goes where the last hand sent it and overshoots the letter. The Fuld heart of 1900 had three felt pads and was right; mine has three turned brass feet under cut felt, on a plane rather than a point, and it moves under four fingers like a curling stone.

To show it needs a window with a rim. The eye reads a letter against an edge, and a bare hole in a piece of plastic has none; the reading is ambiguous by half a character and the sitters argue. A brass ring settles it. Mine are lathe-turned from thin-wall tube, thirty-two thousandths, so that the ring is a fine line and not a bezel, and the letter is centred in it or it is not, and everyone at the table can see which.

To weigh it needs mass. A pointer that weighs nothing transmits every tremor of every hand as a lurch; one with some heft integrates them into a movement. The hardwoods do this. Ebony, bloodwood, purpleheart and rosewood all sit in the hand with an authority that a plastic heart cannot. Stone does it better still, and I make pointers in granite and serpentine for the boards that are looked at as much as used.

The underside of a pointer planchette
The underside of a pointer planchetteThree turned feet shod in felt, a brass lens ring, and the engraved brass plate. The feet are what you are paying for: they decide whether the piece glides or scrapes.
The pointer planchette on a board
The pointer planchette on a boardBrass lens ring, three brass feet under felt, the brass plate with the eye. On one of my boards, the pentagram cut into the field.
planchettebrass footfeltboard 0.8 mm
A foot, in sectionTurned brass, a felt pad, and less than a millimetre between the pointer and the board. The pointer rests on a plane made by three of these, which is why it does not rock.

Any BoardSized to Suit

For any board ever made

I make pointers for my own boards, and for everyone else's. The antique boards in the photographs, a Fuld, a Rajah, a Swami, a homemade stencil from the first years of the century, are all carrying pointers of mine, cut to suit them. Send a photograph of the board and its dimensions and I will size the pointer to it and choose feet for its surface. The plastic one that came with it can go in a drawer.

The plate on the underside is engraved brass, with the maker's name and the number. It is there so that in fifty years someone can find out where the thing came from.

A William Fuld Ouija with one of my pointers on it
A William Fuld Ouija with one of my pointers on itThe Parker Brothers issue of the Fuld board, birdseye maple, and an ebonised oak pointer of mine sitting where its own plastic one used to. The brass ring is the window.
Boards of three eras, and a pair of L-rods
Boards of three eras, and a pair of L-rodsA 1940s Swami Mystery Talking Board, a modern pentagram board, and a hand-stencilled homemade Ouija from the early twentieth century, its GOOD BY cut by someone who had never seen the trademark. Brass L-rods at the left.

The specification

The skeletal planchette on an 1890 Kennard board
The skeletal planchette on an 1890 Kennard boardTwenty-seven bones in bone china, resting on a board made before the OUIJA trademark was granted.

And for those who want the pointer to be the point: the skeletal planchette, a human hand in bone china, twenty-seven bones, that rides the board and taps the letter it stops on. It is on the exotic tier, and it is the only pointer I make that people photograph more than they use.

CommissionOpen an Instrument

Name the instrument, the timber, the stones, the wording, and what you intend it for. I reply with a drawing, a quotation, the current number in the register, and a date range rather than a date, because timber and the sky both keep their own time.

The RegisterEnter Your Name

The register is written to when a numbered instrument is completed, when one becomes available, and when a new family is opened. It is never sold and never lent.

Occasional, and never passed on.