if you have anythings about bullet-catch...that you thinks i will find interestings...books...ideas you want to share...new solutions...contact me please...

take care

kuffs

I would just like to offer the advice of Ted Annemann - "Don't do it!" If you haven't seen Annemann / Orville Meyer's work on the bullet catch, in which the catcher takes his life in his hands (whom do you trust?), it is worth a look. (Either in the files of the Jinx, or now OOP book by Max Abrams.) This is old school, but should give you plenty to consider on methodology. By the way, I'm not trying to discourage you. I think it's a great effect, with a serious history.

Does anyone remember the ABC "Wide World of Sports" special in the '70's, which featured martial arts, and a bullet catch by a performer who had a nasty scar on the side of his head from being grazed in a previous show? I guess I'm now old enough to remember sketchy details.

I have a small one not involving a gun. it is just a shell. You use your lighter, there is a loud bang, you drop the now shot cartridge into a glass and spit the bullet from your mouth. Contact me if I can help.

Bullet catch
There is a version in the Pallbearers Reveiw.
It puts a shiver down my back every time I read it. You use real, examined firearms and bullets. The method frightens me!

I have another version that was put out by Supreme Magic years ago in booklet form. This uses rifles and seems much more sensible.

There is a third way that I have been working on. It uses an air pistol with a marked dart.

Taurus Magic, in the UK, sell an effecy with a very realistic blank automatic. Now way can you get hurt. The whole effect is electronic.

Hope this helps

To quote Murphy's Law..If something can go wrong, it will.

Best thoughts,
John Smetana

If you look in the triple dare section I had a bullet catch that involved getting it to look more like what happend in The Matrix... they shoot and you raise your hand and the bullet visibly slows down so you can catch it. I worked out all the details using some of the ideas that people came up with and most of my solution. I think I'm going to try and sell it to Lance Burton this summer. Other than that, I have a funny bullet catch routing based on an idea from David Harkey. I can let you have that one if you PM me.
Greg

I heard somewhere that Anneman set up the bullet catch by having a marksman from the army come to his show and be prepared to shoot him. Anneman walked up to the soldier and whispered "Just put it a little above my right ear."
Any truth to this rumor?
James

In the 1992 book, "Annemann The Life and Times of a Legend," by the late Max Abrams, on page 525 there is an account of Annemann's reported method of bullet catching. This method was published, without Annemann's permission, by Joe Ovette in a manuscript titled "Publicity Miracles." In the third paragraph on the above-noted page, the instructions to the marksman include, "Tell him when he fires to aim a foot or two over your head or to your side." Pages 570-580 of the Abrams book also provide a sequence of photos showing Ted Annemann performing the effect outdoors at Fort Erie.

Thanks Victor,
I always wondered if that was true.
Sheesh, that pretty much takes the cake for
"gutsy" methods.
Kind of makes fake guns look a little wimpy

Seems to depend very much on assuming that the marksman has good hearing. Perhaps that assumption cost Chung Ling Soo his life in 1918.

The American magician William Robinson, who performed as Ching Ling Soo died because of a malfunction of a gimmicked rifle.

Investigator, Robert Churchill, discovered that Chung Ling Soo's death was a result of a failing mechanism in one of the two guns. The rifles, which he used numerous times over a period of 12 years, had been worn out due to improper removal of bullets, involving the unscrewing of the guns barrel's, which in turn led to considerable tread striping and his ultimate demise. Robinson himself did the maintenance of the rifles and bullet removal after each use.
The guns were the muzzle loading, cap lock firing type. That is, powder, wads and bullets were put down the barrel and rammed home with a ramrod. They did not use metal (or paper) cartridges. They had two barrels, one with a harmless blank (powder and no bullet), and one that received the real bullet (but not the powder).
The accident was caused by one of two rifles firing incorrectly, propelling a real bullet into Chung Ling Soo's lung.
On the Saturday of his fatal wound, he performed the trick by having his assistants Dan Crulee and Jack Grossman, fire two rifles at him. As mentioned the gunpowder in one of the guns fell through into the barrel containing the real bullet. This was made possible through the stripped threads and the small grain of powder he preferred to use. When the gun was fired the powder in the barrel containing a real bullet exploded propelling a bullet, hitting Chung Ling Soo. No one knows which assistant actually held the fatal gun. David Coperfield had the actual weapon in his museum and it can be seen on his web site.

thank you all...