Hey guys. As always it is a great pleasure to talk with such a great array of professionals (hoping the flattery gets me a good answer). I have working on a world's most unlikely strongman act (The tall skinny guy that I am) and I am looking to see if anyone has some suggestions about a resource for a leather mouth piece for lifting a spectator with my teeth.

I have read several descriptions in books like Ottley's How to Perform Strongman Feats but I wanted to see if anyone here had either made one before or had a resource for a custom made piece from a prop maker or leather shop. Thank you in advance for your help.

Some circus aerialists suspend others from their mouths. Not a ton of help, but maybe a lead to what direction to go in.

or maybe here for another lead: http://usawa.com/teeth-lifting/

I had totally forgotten about the aerialists connection and was over focusing. Really appreciate it "The Sponge". It is appearing more and more like if I want one of these I will have to pickup the leather and rivet one together myself. The whole time I am thinking about this feat I am now reminded of Houdini's early childhood attempt to copy the circus aerialists he saw at the big top and ripping out his front teeth due to lack of knowledge. Hoping my attempt goes better.

This strongman doesn't know either, but he at least posts a pic you may be able to go off of.
http://www.dennisrogers.net/teeth-lifting-device/

That is the best Pic I have seen of the device so far. I think I will try to bring this to a leather worker and see what they can come up with too. Thank you again.

I've seen several designs. One is like the one pictured...kind of like a key fob. Another is more like a full-formed mouthpiece, made from a mold. The other was in between.

I think the question you need to answer for yourself is how you want your teeth to work. If it's a fob-like design, you'll have to use a lot of jaw-strength to clamp down on it. If it's a fitted piece, the shape will help distribute the weight more evenly around your teeth and jaw.

I would like as mush weight to be born by the maxilla and across the zygomatic parts of my skull rather than my teeth. If I understand the mechanics, ideally you want to exert the tension force on as stable of support structure as possible and I believe the point of the piece pictured is to hook into the top of the mouth rather than using the teeth. So I definitely need to customize either design to my mouth no matter what. I can see the application of the mouth guard since it would be the row of rear teeth locking down and supporting each other to resist the tension force. Do you happen to know the resource used for the fitted mouth guard? Maybe some google fu on my part to see what might be in order.

Most likely I will have a leather working friend mock up something and then dial in everything through experimentation with little weight and slowly increase the weight as I develop the piece.

Thank you Harley Newman.

The leather fobs are just for gripping with the teeth, and I think they're what are used in competitions. It's not my specialty, however, so I'm unsure.

I'd go with more of a mouthguard. The extra support makes sense. I like having teeth, and I don't like having to pay the dentist to fix them.

Good luck!

Didn't Blaine did something similar in the past?

I don't know, but he's beginning to do things I consider interesting.