Noob here so be gentle.
Horses tackle has rings involved.
Also the top of the lampshade I wore home on January 1 had a ring at the top....

Good Luck!!

Hi Dan, and can I say what an honour it is that you chose to lose your Magic Café virginity on my post.

Thanks for the suggestion Dan and welcome to the Café.

Thanks Sealegs it was everything I could have hoped for......grin. I was thinking about this more last night and a lot depends on the character or show you are presenting but if you are using the smaller (ninja style) rings I have seen women's evening wear where the top and bottom of the dress are held together by rings. In essence the bottom of the dress is suspended from the top by rings. The dress I remember had only two rings one front and one back but this could easily be overcome. a possible routine would be to have the lady come out and you remove a ring from the dress and turn her around to remove the ring from the other side when you turn her back around the first ring has regenerated within the dress and you then pull it out to have three in your hand then you turn her again to check and sure enough the one in the back had regenerated again. This could be repeated until you had enough rings in hand to do your routine.
Hope this might lend some inspiration.

Thanks again Dan. The rings I have are actually 12" diameter ones for stage... so the dress thing might be a little hard to do... But the great thing is that having posted your idea here someone might well get inspired by it for their one routine or spark another idea for here.

George's post, that completely ignored the parameters I set because he found them too challenging, still gave me food for thought on tis subject. So you never know where the next workable idea will get its spark from.

Thanks again for posting your thoughts and ideas.

During one escape show, I attached a key via a carbiner clip to a linking ring (just because I had it around) and hung in view to keep it visible. If you do any kind of prior routine that utilizes the necessity to keep something in view (key, envelope, or the like) you could contrive it as some kind of hanging device, thus motivating its presence...although it may not explain its brethren very well when you pull out the others for the linking ring portion of the routine.

Obviously by challenging you mean boring My last 4 suggestions fit the parameters!

They do... I appear to have wronged you and will compensate you with a pint of ale when I see you next. (Blackpool in a about a week and bit maybe?)

It wouldn't, really, but the audience doesn't know how a backdrop (or other odd, but fairly large technical gear that you might use) works. It's merely an excuse to motivate the presence of these props on the stage.

Hi Sealegs,

How about defective clock mechanism pieces manufactured for the Big Ben renovation that is to be conducted beginning in 2017?

Regards, Steve

Tribal neck rings? (Obviously this would require a certain amount of sensitivity in presentation so it doesn't come across like you're mocking another culture.)

If you have kids (or are willing to pretend you do) you could introduce them as coming from some very expensive doll bikes that you bought for your kids, only to have the little rascals promptly disassemble them into their component parts. The rings used to be part of the wheels. Maybe some other props you need to introduce could be other parts of the bike. Any parents in the audience will feel your pain.

For another approach: 12" rings are precisely the same size as the internal ribbing rings that offer structural support for USGS Cirrus-class weather monitoring balloons. (NOTE: If you google "USGS Cirrus-class weather monitoring balloons" you may have a hard time finding them. That's because I just made them up. But it sounded plausible, didn't it?

Do you want suggestions for a group of rings (that was where my mast guide was going), or do you need a suggestion that would be applicable to a single ring?

A single ring could be a key ring for a jailer (but you will then have to explain why the keys are not on the ring).

Also, some time ago I was putting together an audition show for membership in a magic club. The premise was that I asked my wife to put an "Eddie Bauer" box into my car in the morning and she thought I had said the "flowered" box. As a result I showed up at the audition with a sewing box of my grandmother's, instead of the Eddie Bauer box with my magic junk. I would rummage through the sewing box desperately, trying to do tricks with its contents. One of the effects was a ring on/off rope. The ring was the interior ring of an embroidery hoop (it was a solid ring that went inside an outer ring that was split but could be tightened with a screw-based hardware system). The hoop was designed to hold a cloth taut between the rings for embroidery. The one in the box did have some embroidery mounted in it, which included some velvet piping loosley attached. When I removed the embroidered cloth, I had a difficult time with the piping linking and unlinking from the inner ring of the hoop (this was the routine). I think I was purportedly trying to disengage the piping to do a cut and restored rope effect with it, which I described incessantly while trying to free the piping from the ring.

How about..."Have you been in some of the new swanky hotels. They have designed the towel rings to be removable so the staff never have to touch the towels. Look, I have a bunch here from a recentry stay...."

Thanks for the input people.

How about doing your act backwards. Start by acknowledging your entrance applause as if it was the conclusion of your act. Three music stand type round tables supporting some props are on the stage. Stage lights fade off and work lights abruptly come on. You take off your jacket and start to pack your props. As you do so, you inadvertently start to perform magic. In the meantime, your work lights slowly fade and a lightly gelled followspot picks you up. Finally the tables are to be packed. Three rings hold down the fabric tablecloth on each. You start to put the rings in a suitcase and one drops. You're into a linking ring routine for your finale. Lots of possibilities here.