I was thinking about using the mismade flag as a piece in my show with music, but already use a change bag for 20th century silks. Is there a production item that will fit the final load and all other silks for this routine besides a change bag?

Thanks
Chaz

When I used to sell the effect, I suggested change bag, or devils napkin, or even a (I believe it is called) a Jap box?
The Niffen tube could work, or there used to be a magic hands tube you rolled up that had a gimmick.
I liked that, because you show the tube flat, roll it up and place an object in one end and pull the silk out the other, then can show the tube empty each time.
You could use a hinged genii tube which can be shown empty between each switch as well. That would be my favorite.
I could give you more off the top of my head, but then I would have to write a booklet 50 ways to do the mismade.

The Niffin tube is a good idea. You don't have to use the same prop for all of the changes.

I use a double load Joso Boso top hat for my routine.

Jim

Thanks guys I will check into that!

Chaz

There is some thing similar to a Niffen tube called Pandora’s Box that would work.

A simple folded-up and then rolled-up newspaper tube can be used a la’ the Mongolian Silks. The newspaper is simple to gaff and the routine 9color changing silk – white silks turn into three different colored silks) would be easy to adapt to a miss-made flag routine.

Get Billy McComb’s “25 Years Wiser” and look at his half died silk. Make the dye tube gimmicks as he explains (they take a larger silk) and perform abridge his routine to accommodate the miss-made flag routine. Then it will look bare handed. Not easy but not impossible and no one is doing it.

It can be fun to use the "Light / Heavy Chest". With the red, white and blue silks, Nobody can lift the chest. The same is true with the Mismade flags. However, once the American flag is presented, the chest can easily be moved out of the way.

Bob Sanders

Laflin's sells a "Switch Can"

The original effect was done with a dye tube, passing the silks through a rolled up piece of construction paper. Rice sold a massive metal dye tube made to hold all the silks for the various changes. Wiz Kid Wilhelmina came up with a transparent dye tube in 2011 to be used with her version called "Hooray For the Red, White and Blue" found in The Wizards' Journal #21.

Meanwhile, Wiz Kid Qua-Fiki was working on a "Mis-Made Jack O'Lantern" for his Halloween show that was based on Ted "Suds" Sudback's "Blendo Bag" principle, so it's all self-contained. It could easily be remade with silk flags for a self-contained Mismade Flag Version. By self-contained, I mean you start with a small bag, tuck in the red and white silks while the blue one misses the bag and drops to the floor, you shake the bag and pull out the red and white flag. You spot the missing blue silk, poke it and the red and white flag back into the bag and this time, when you shake the bag, the bag itself transforms into the red and white and blue flag.

Then Wiz Kid Qua-Fiki came up with a new type of see-through mesh Tear-apart Change Bag tube thing-ee that he described in The Wizards' Journal #22. Because his new bag looks and works nothing like the church-collection change bag used by many magicians, you could actually use the two in separate effects in your show as long as they were not performed right after one another. He invented the new bag because he needed a show that would fit into his knapsack that he carries when he rides his bicycle and the whole act folds up and is soft and pliable for that purpose.

Of course, you can't buy these things ready-made anywhere, you have to be a "Do-It-Yourself-Magician" and Do it Yourself. But my reason for working with Wiz Kids on these projects is to show you that if a kid can learn to paste and glue and sew, you can, too.

I know it is late to answer this thread, but the Mis-Made Flag effect was always done with the a plunger dye tube. Magic Dealers suggested the Change Bag because it meant larger sales for them.

Pick the larger dye tube if you do all the new Mis-Made Flag routines.

http://www.silkkingmagic.com/Rice's%20D......ubes.htm

This will be the best investment in magic you will make in your life! For only $10.00 you will get the finest silk gimmick ever made.

Don't forget Barry Mitchell's "Flag-o-matic" (Flag-o-matic 2 is actually at this link, since the first version is sold out), which is a variation on this theme.

- Donald

I would not call Flag-O-matic a magic trick. The machine is never shown empty or the cloth does not come out the end to show there is nothing inside. This is a very weak attempt at a mis-made flag trick. Best to start working on version 3.

Bill Hegbli has given you the real work!!!

Change bags were/are used in churches to take up the offering.

In '76, I put the mismade flag "in". I used the "John Braun" (big) dye tube. It sold very well.

There are soooooooo many ways and depending upon the context and plot you can go crazy considering them all other than a change-bag. A square circle would work, as will temple screens, as will a jap hank box (small, well folded flag set), you could even use the pockets of your outfit if you set up right.

I have several P&A variations (now for sale) WHERE YOU CAN DROP OR FORGET VARIOUS COLORS as you go along and come up with different missing elements until you get it right (to Patriotic Music, of course.)

You could also use one of those kids "washing machine" laundry ratchet props with no problem for a medium one change set.

The prob lem I see with the Niffon tube is having to repeat the gaff's action a second time to get the flag right....and a possible fumble or reveal there.

HOW ABOUT A DOUBLE DOVE PAN???

Whether a "change bag" is an obvious "magician's prop that looks like a church collection bag" is one of those things that I feel magicians obsess over and that the lay audience could care less about. I seriously doubt that any (pardon the expression) lay person watching a magician use a P&L change bag to change red, white and blue silks into an American flag thinks to himself: "Why is he using a church collection bag?"

The bottom line is: Is the audience entertained? If the answer is "Yes," then it really doesn't matter what the magician uses to make the trick work. I have to think that the comedy effect of the mis-made flag overrides any imagined association of the prop with a "church collection bag." In fact, you might even get a laugh saying, "Here I have an empty bag on a stick--just like the ones you see in church on Sunday." (Just kidding, folks!)

----- Amado "Sonny" Narvaez
P.S. This debate reminds me of magic purists who get livid when a magician uses the word "silk" when referring to an 18-inch "handkerchief." It's an insult to the audience's intelligence that using the word "silk" instead of "handkerchief" discombobulates them. It's like saying when people hear a newscaster say: "We switch now to a report from The White House" that the TV audience thinks a building is going to talk. Gimme a break! And give your audience credit for some degree of intelligence--enough to extrapolate what you're talking about. (Please pardon my use of a four-syllable word.)

I have been using "Flag O Matic" I have done many shows with it, it is my opening effect after the warm up, Bill, I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on this one, partially . I begin with red, white and blue confetti that is sprinkled in a goblet then turns them into the 3 silks, they now go into the "machine". And the kids scream and laugh at every turn and when the giant flag comes out, their jaws drop. As so many have said here on the Café. It's all presentation .

Folks may not say it looks like a collection bag, but they sure know the bag is responsible for the change. They are not dumb.

I think perhaps the way to approach the question is in terms of what gives you the best effect. If you want the most magical, I think it is hard to beat rolling up a sheet of paper and having the transformation happen as you shove the silks through. For silly, a change receptacle lets you do the mixed up flags without having the hassle of stealing multiple dye tubes.

I would rather ask which method lets you present this the way you really want to than to ask what are all the ways to transform three silks into a flag.

Hope that makes sense. I hate typing on my phone.

-Patrick

When using a Change Bag, suggest that the purpose of the handle is to keep you from touching whatever the volunteer puts into the bag. Also, I believe that, the quicker the change, the more magical it is and the less time the audience has to think about the method.

Mr. Woolery commented that "Folks may not say it [a change bag] looks like a collection bag, but they sure know the bag is responsible for the change. They are not dumb."

The same criticism can be said for just about any magic trick/illusion that uses a prop. I don't think "rolling up a sheet of paper and having the transformation happen as you shove the silks through" is that much more magical than a change bag. The audience would surely know that "the rolled up sheet of paper is responsible for the change."

The most magical change of red, white and blue silks to a flag would of course be a blendo effect. Why bother with a rolled up sheet of paper if you could just hold three silks (red, white, and blue) and shake them to change them to an American flag?

However, I think by definition magicians are _supposed_ to have unusual, mysterious, esoteric pieces of equipment, ranging from a magic wand to the athanor used by alchemists to transmute base metal into gold. Sure, it would look better if you could touch something and change it to gold the way King Midas did. But if I could really change a bar of lead into a bar of gold using an athanor, that would absolutely, positively without a shadow of a doubt be MAGIC!

Here's a link to a picture of an athanor:
http://www.kuthumadierks.com/articoli/ri......nor2.jpg

Granted it's a huge, clumsy piece of apparatus, but the world would beat a path to your door if you had one that really worked and changed base metal into gold. Not only that, you would be recognized as the indisputable World's Greatest Magician (unless someone else also had a working athanor).

I've said before, if someone had a square circle that was nothing but the square and the circle--no gimmick--and could have the audience examine it--and then could still produce a dozen silk scarves out of it, that would be a great magic trick. Such a piece of apparatus does exist--or did at one time. The "circle" part of the square circle was a phantom tube. How much cleaner can you get? No black art insert. What you see was all there was--a "square box" and a "circular tube." (Does anyone know if such a square circle is currently available on the market?)

In my unfinished treatise _Heavy Magic_, I described a continuum of magic effects for producing a handkerchief on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being the least magical and 10 being the most magical. The continuum looked something like this:
1-Producing a silk or silks from a square circle (least magical)
2-Producing a silk or silks from a ghost tube
3-Producing a silk or silks from a phantom tube
4-Producing a silk or silks from a drawer box
5-Producing a silk from a sixth finger
6-Producing a silk from a Silent Mora silk production clip
7-Producing a silk via the pulled up sleeve method
8-Producing a silk via a "Stillwell Handkerchief" (Channing Pollock used this method once)--basically a hank rolled and made into a Stillwell ball
9-Producing a silk via the "Flash Silk Production" in Tarbell
10-Producing a silk in mid-air from a flash of fire (the way Del Ray did in his stage act)

To be sure, there are other methods of producing a silk or silks--e.g. a drawer box. And actually I think some drawer boxes can be very deceptive (the ones that use a black art principle of lattice-work on the sides of the outside of the box.)

----- Amado "Sonny" Narvaez

Sonny,
the only square circle I know of that is a phantom tube is from Creative magic called "Invisible Paint"

Hi Guys

You might want to consider making a simple double "change bag" out of a paper bag. Easy-to-do and doesn't look tricky.

Julie