I hang out with a small circle of guys in Vancouver, one of whom is a street magician who does an ungimmicked phone book tear. Hand him a phone book, and he tears it. He's not a Café member, so I'm posting this question on his behalf. If somebody wanted to learn all the work on the Phone Book tear effect (gimmicked and ungimmicked), what things should he research?

To be clear: I've got no personal interest in learning any secrets or performing this myself, so I'm not asking for people to share the specifics of methods or whatnot. I'm not secret-hunting. Any information posted here would be going straight to him.

From what you said, he already knows how to do it. Google "strong man stunts."

That's an old stunt which has been published in many books, I don't remember any name but if you search you will find for sure..

There was a book called Strong Man Stunts. This is very easy to do. When I was in college, there wasn't a phone book within a 1/4 mile radius of the music department that I had not torn in half.

I won a lot of beer with that trick.

He can do it with phone books up to a given size (1200 pages or so?), but not beyond. He's gotten admirably far by self-teaching (doesn't have to doctor the books, doesn't have to tear through the spine) but I wanted to see if there was more info out there so that he could really establish a reputation with this one, so that he can be the guy who tears any phone book in half.

Bill, is the book Ottley Coulter's "How to Perform Strong Man Stunts"?

http://www.sandowplus.co.uk/Competition/......ro-1.htm

Bob Newhart did it once as the punchline on his show. It didn't look like it was faked, but what do I know?

Thanks, that's really interesting. I might even try to incorporate some of this into my show.

Charles MacMahon has a book on the subject as well. It's called Feats of Strength and Dexterity. A very good book. It has a lot of information in it that he could use to make a whole show out of strong man feats.

Tearing from the binder side is a lot easier than the page size.

Would you agree?

Just saw the later done by a group from the Extreme Team who came through KC.

They also did the water bottle blow up, brick breaking and twisting a ball bat in two...

now where is my can of spinach...


Harris

I've always found breaking a phone book at the binder side easier. Mainly because I can break it along my leg and have that momentum to continue the tear. I actually adapted my method after seeing the Extreme Team (or maybe the Power Team, I get them confused).

The binder side is much easier.

I haven't tried the top side yet.

Harris