Is anybody besides me still doing the Spirit Nut??? In my routine I "borrow" everything at the table including the nut. Ive had a lot of fun with it over the years especially with other magicians sitting at the table with me.

-=tabman

I carry one with a shoestring in my pocket now and then. I like the larger sized old ones like the Bremas more than the smaller newer Viking or RNT2 nuts. It's my alternative to an Ellis Ring and shoestring I carry sometimes.

Greg

My favorite is an old Johnson Spirit nut, the square brass set, I bought from Porky's in Houston around 1970. I've had a bunch of others over the years but the Brema and the Johnson have been my favorites.

I like to do the routine at a table. I pull a 5/8" box end wrench out of my back pocket and pretend to unbolt part of the table top from underneth and produce the nut that way. It never made sense to me to pull it out of my pocket.

One reason I never used my own Johnson's Spirit Nut much (although I think I still have it buried in my "stuff" somewhere) was that I wanted it to seem impromptu, but as you've said, a nut isn't something that most people typically carry around in their pockets. Never having thought of anything like your idea of pretending to remove it from the table, my hope was to try to find a source of ordinary nuts to match the gimmick, so that I could act like I just found the nut lying around somewhere, and after performing the effect I might be able to just casually leave the nut where I'd "found" it, without having to worry about someone deciding to keep it as a souvenir, or whatever, or if it just got lost. But buying several sets just in order to get the duplicates never seemed very economical, and the little bit of hunting I did in a couple of local hardware stores for possible duplicates was fruitless.

So I guess that's my story as to why I never used it much. Perhaps your idea may help inspire me to come up with some similar "ploy" -- unless I decide to just steal your idea outright, that is. I do still wish I could find some source of extra duplicates without having to spend a small fortune for them, but I guess I can't say I've searched that extensively, perhaps similar or identical real brass nuts are available in "bulk" somewhere if I was to look a little further.

Like you, I spent a lot of time trying to find duplicate nuts but wasnt able to come up with anything. If you find some please let me know.

Using the ploy of removing a nut from under the table you're able to finish clean because you can replace the nut.

When you "remove the nut" get a couple of people to hold onto the table top to prevent it from coming off. Play it big.

Depending on the crowd, pull off a shoe and put it on the table and remove the shoelace while the ungaffed nut rests on the table, then swap it out.

Another twist is instead of removing the nut undercover of the hankerchief, put the nut on and then take it off.

I always carry a blue bandana in my back pocket. Beats a white hankie all to heck.

Replace the nut under the table when you're done. You can hide the nut in your sock while you're fiddling around under the table. Make it noisy and bang around with the wrench. Ive pretended to use a spoon as a wrench too.

Main thing is to have fun.

Use any of these ideas with my compliments and thanks for sharing your thoughts on it as well.

-=tabman

I still use this all the time. Love the play on taking a nut off the table. One thing I do is use a saftey pin and the nut ends up on the pin.

A safety pin?? that's a good idea. How do you routine it??? One of my favorite routines is Jerry Andrus Linking Pins. That might be a cool seguay??

I recently found this prop and decided to challenge myself to come up with a few good presentations for it. I have enjoyed the suggestions here in this thread and in a few others on the Magic Café and have looked through any resources that I have. One of my favorite ideas that I have come up with so far would actually play better for stage than close-up and so my question:

Is there such thing as a stage size Spirit Nut? Or an equivalent prop?

Thank you.

Gilbert

Linking finger rings.

Thank you, Pete Biro.