Jim,

I've loaded from a jacket pocket and it is a stone witch!

With the big load there will be a tell as the movement of the bottom edge of the jacket buckles when you are pulling out a loaded fist.

Jacket pockets were designed to hold thin flat items as to not ruin the break of the suit. This being said a fist coming out would hike up the side of the coat like nobody’s business.

This is not to say it can't be done it will just take a lot of engineering on your part.

I know when carrying a firearm under a coat (don't ask just trust me it was legal) I used to have to either have the jackets built while wearing my rig or buy a jacket two sizes two big and have it altered.

Orange loads would be the same way even with one to a pocket. Coming out of a topit would alleviate some of that but you would need an excuse to be going to the pocket every time.

When I do a show where I need to wear a coat I do a different routine with smaller cups.

My oh my, the headaches this routine can cause. I guess that is why when it looks good and is done right everybody appreciates it.

Best,

Dan-

This is just what I'm dealing with now. I tried the pocket approach and it ain't workin' for my street act. I'm now using a pouch of my own design (and my wife's expert construction!) and I'm convinced that this is the way for me.

Even so, pulling my fist out of a pouch with a basball-sized object is problematic. The cloth pouch rides up if the hand catches on one side or another and seems to draw way too much attention to what my hand is doing down there.

I like the look and versatility of a jacket. It just seems like it would take a lot of alteration, along with the inclusion of a topit, to make it viable.

Go James! Keep working on it and I'm sure you'll find a way that is right for you. Especially with all the help and experience from Danny and the other great people here.

Mr. Swami Bill,

When I made my pouch I sewed the ties about 1" from the right and left edge seam. This allowed the top to fall farther open due to the force of gravity. This might help you solve the catching problem on the final loads.

The front panel of the pouch should be wider than the back panel, maybe 5 or 6 inches. When it is sewn together, this extra space and "give" allows for easy removal of the hand with the load objects. Experiment with your hand and your load objects to find out how much extra width the front panel needs.

A jacket setup is great, but outdoors in the summer, it is just too hot for me. I work with the pouch.

Danny is right. It takes some "doin'" to get all this right and find what is best for the way you work. But the results are worth the time and effort.

I hope this helps!

Regards,
Gerald

Jeff and Gerald - Thanks for the tips. I'm going to try the ties and see if they work. Gerald, I had thought, in my initial design, that the front should be wider but somehow it only came out wider by an inch or two. I see now that your suggestion is better. Looks like we'll be cranking out another one this weekend to incorporate the changes. My wife will roll her eyes when she hears about this...undefined

I mentioned leather covered balls the other day for doing the cups in outdoor situations. Such balls may be seen here:
http://jamesriser.com/Magic/LeatherBalls/Info.html

Jim,

they are nice....but can you make them 1"1/4 ?
What kind of core are you using, rubber, steel(I am thinking perfect hold out here) or marble?

Thanks,

Carlos

Hi Carlos;
The core on the balls shown is a marble. I could do them in 1 1/4" with a steel ball bearing core. I'd hate to think of the shipping costs involved, though. If interested, PM me.
Jim

I have a set of Eric Evans' leather monkey fists and they are superb! These look nice, too.

I just wanted to add to my previous thoughts on the orange loads from the jacket pocket Jim was talking about. Do you think it might go better from the front pants pockets? I was thinking that with an orange size load (because to me this is really the problem. An orange that will fill the Galli – Galli cups is just so big.) The bulge in the pocket is going to be tremendous on a jacket.

What I was thinking was with pants you could enlarge the pants pockets because suit pants are bigger anyway and spread the bulge over a greater distance. The Cellini method of adding a Gib to the front of the pants might work as well.

The big problem in my thinking is coming out of the pocket with a load that big it would seem like it is going to flash no matter what.

I know when I go to the pouch the cup actually goes into the pouch on the off moment of the load. I do not pull the orange out and place it in the cup. I bring the cup over the orange under cover.

I know in Mike Rogers’ routine he went to the edge of the table and loaded from below as well. I’ve just been trying to wrap my head around a way to get a load this big to come from any pocket without the flash.

I guess the topit would work okay going from the outside and loading from the inside. I had a cups routine that worked that way and it was okay but I was using smaller loads.

Hmmm…

How are you making out with it Jim? It is certainly an interesting problem.

Best,

Dan-

I have made a couple of Bags that hang from my belt. They are sort of a cross between a pocket and a Giberciere (the idea was stolen, er…borrowed, from a couple of old Billiard Ball Manipulator friends, that used similar holdouts).

I wear them toward the rear of the front pants pocket but not all the way back to the rear. They are covered by my jacket (or Hawaiian shirt). Thus, the Jacket (shirt) hands correctly, no extra tailoring is needed with my trousers (al la’ Cellini) and no pocket budge is seen.

The loads are fairly easy to conceal. The jacket does the work.

I have been playing with Pete’s Galli-Galli cups and am experiencing the same problem with flashing my large loads. I think that I will be forced to keep using my Giberciere for this set of cups, or adapt an under the table load technique similar the one I used to use (and right out of the old Blackstone Sr. “Book of Magic”).

First, I wanted to say that I agree with Carlos re: the size of balls for street-sized cups. 1 1/4 is a good size. Gazzo's soccer balls are, I believe, 1 3/8. I have a number of superballs that are 1 1/4 and they look good ontop of my gali gali cups (by Pete Biro). Maybe Jim Riser could use 1 inch superballs to cover in leather rather than heavy ball bearings?


Dan & Harry,
Thanks for the further thoughts and suggestions about loading large final loads from body loads. The two problems as you defined it (I think correctly) are a bulge showing, and flashing while the actual extraction and loading takes place. Also, Dan mentioned previous about the pocket movement during the extraction of the large load being a give away as well.

If we're trying to use the jacket pocket, it's got to be engineered for the larger size. Then the flashing problem. How about if the hand lifts the orange *palm up* as it starts out of the pocket, and just *before* or *as* the left hand clears the pocket, the cup meets it at the edge of the pocket. The fruit is loaded, the left hand swivels up to hold the cup, while the left pinky finger assumes the duty of holding the fruit in the cup. The right hand swings back to the misdirection of the move, per your routine, while the left hand with its now-loaded cup, returns to the table at a more leasurely pace. I am going to try this move to see how the angles are.

Dan,
I also wanted to ask you to clarify this paragraph for me. I'm not getting it; too dense on my part:

<<I guess the topit would work okay going from the outside and loading from the inside. I had a cups routine that worked that way and it was okay but I was using smaller loads. >>

I think Harry's idea is great of using a belt-mounted pouch of sorts. I had sketched out an idea along that line, but I'm glad to see that someone has actually done it. (I must say at this point, as a digression, that the field and traditions of magic are so extensive, that I always feel myself standing on the shoulders of what others have already done.)

Harry, when you stole final loads from this "belt pouch," were you miming as if your hand was going to your front pants pocket? That was where I got hung up with my ideas along these lines. If I had a pouch at the waist and hidden under the jacket, where was my hand supposed to be going?

In my routine, my hand is going to a (jacket) pocket with a small ball (supposedly) as an excuse to secure the final loads. Could I say, "Now, I will put this ball way into my back pants pocket, and yet, bingo! here it is back under the cup." (By the way, that is not my patter! Just wanted to convey the idea.)

If the logic of where my hand is supposed to be going when it reaches under the jacket could be worked out, I think loading inside the jacket is a great way to go, because it gives great protection against flashing during the loading, because the loading would happen, as Harry said, under protection of the jacket. The hand and the cup could both meet just before the edge of the jacket. The jacket would certainly cover any angles, hence handling the surrounded angles.

That's where my thinking is so far. Would love to keep at this as the imput is helping clarify things.

Thanks!
Jim

This sounds like it might go over well. If the pocket opening were enlarged enough to allow good clearance for the mouth of the cup to actually enter the pocket a bit it would help the flash as well. As a side thought, if the pocket had a thick piping stitched around it as some coats do it would help hide the actual size of the pocket opening like a thin model sawing. Obviously no pocket flaps just the piping. Also, if you had a stiffener added to the construction of the pockets like interfacing it could be used to help hold the pocket open very much like a pouch. The trick would be to get the weight to hang inside the jacket so it would not bulge. The interfacing could help in this as well by the stiffness pushing the loads toward the body.





In the routine I had I used two Ammar style topits one on each side. As the LH would go to the L pocket with the small ball the RH holding the cup would go to the L edge of the coat to apparently hold the coat to ease the LH going to the pocket.

To clarify, you are grabbing any small object out of a jacket pocket. One hand goes to the pocket as the other hand holds the edge of the coat so that you are not flapping around. It is very natural. The hand holding the edge of the coat in this case is holding a cup. The cup mouth is actually inside the edge of the coat.

This being said it is a simple matter for the LH to reach into the topit from the outside of the pocket as it is dropping a ball and to grab a load from the topit and feed it into the mouth of the cup in the RH. The RH pinky holds the load in and goes to the table as the LH comes out of the pocket. Behind the bar I used to floor people with it and I used a vest with topits not a coat.

It was a very slick way of loading BUT when I tried it on the street I got a big flash from the right side people who could see inside the jacket. This is why I now use a pouch. The pouch is really angle proof. Also behind the bar I was using Bertram size cups and loading small limes or lemons. This is one case where size does matter

This is really a great thread and brainstorming with such a big group should give us all some interesting stuff to think about.

Thanks guys.

Best,

Dan-

I recently had pockets put into the front of a pair of pants (via Cellini) and it makes doing my loads very, very easy. I use Pheonix cups and use small oranges. I hold 4 oranges in the right side pocket and no one has said anything. The reason I had the pouches sewen in rather than using a pouch is because I do a card from zipper and didn't want the pouch in the way. And I didn't like the idea of putting the pouch on towards the end like Gazzo. If anyone is interested in having pouches sewen in to the front, PM me and I'll give you my deminsions.

Hey long time reader, first time poster. I just got a set of The Old World Cups featured in the Joe Steven's Catalog, and they are BEAUTIFUL! Pewter with gold accents modeled after the Paul Fox/Danny Dew cups, they may be too small for street but for anything else...

James, when I use the belt pouches I do mime going to the front trouser pocket the pouch is dark colored and my pants are dark (black and black usually, but I wear Jeans also and have pouches that are made of denim also). I also tend to let my shoulder pull my body to the side and away from the audience to give just a tad bit more additional shade.

My motivation (in my head) is that I am putting a ball in my trousers pocket. My patter doesn’t mention pocket, it’s more of “put this ball away” kind of thing. It is purposefully ambiguous.

The big loads are a pain in the Royal Irish *ss! I take a page of Gazzo’s notebook. I don’t worry about who sees it. I heard him once say that he didn’t worry about the odd guy that spotted a bit of flash; he carried on with his routine uninterrupted. He said that on the street there was always a bad angle. Don’t sweat it!

Been toying with the idea of a mechanical way to load big cups, ala Galli Galli size. Basic idea is a dropper at bottom edge of jacket that "drops" load into a cup on left as right hand is doing something with the other cup, like tossing it up in the air or handing it to someone?

Wow is that good.

Best,

Dan-

While working on cup routine ideas a few years ago, I came up with about 15-20 (?)different ideas for places to conceal the load balls that do not use the pockets. I dislike getting loads from pockets. If I can still find the sheet with the ideas, would anyone be interested in seeing them? I may not be able to find it quickly, though.
Jim

Jim, I love to see your thinking on this problem!