For the last 100 years, magicians have been sawing women in half. The first public performance of a woman being sawed is believed to have been in January 1921 when the British magician P.T. Selbit performed the illusion in London. Since then, magicians have been tricking speculators into believing that the woman is really being cut in half. The trick looks so real that many audience members cover their eyes with their hands, afraid to peek. You can rest assured; no women are being harmed in the making.
It’s vital to the safety of all involved that the magician places their assistant in the correct position before whipping out the giant saw and sawing right through the body of the assistant. No, this isn’t a horror movie! It’s just a magician using some deceit. Clearly, the assistants always make it out alive in one piece or else this trick would have been prohibited a long time ago and there would be many magicians sitting in jail cells around the world. So, how in the world does the magician pull off this seemingly dangerous trick you ask?
Biting The Coin
You have probably seen this performed before either in a magic show or on the street. The trick starts with the magician requesting a coin from a member of the audience. He then proceeds to wow the audience by biting into the coin using only his teeth. This trick makes viewers squirm as they jump to cover their own teeth, imagining how it would feel to break their teeth on steel.
The reason why the trick is so believable is that the magician takes an innocent member from the audience who has absolutely nothing to do with the trick. The magician may even ask that audience member to take a bite from the coin himself. Of course, he is unable to do it. So, how in the world does the magician succeed in doing so? Does he have shark or vampire teeth or something? Most likely not. But, he does have in his possession something else which allows him to be successful and amaze his audience.
Biting a coin in half – Secret
If you’re hoping to perform this trick yourself, you’ll be happy to know that you don’t need to go to magic school to learn how to do it. You only need one thing for the trick, and that’s a fake coin which looks like a real one. But, the difference is that a fake coin is breakable. What the trick requires of the magician is to switch the real coin that the audience member presents with the fake coin.
Of course, this has to be done in a swift enough manner so that nobody catches it. Magicians are very deceiving and many times, they aren’t performing tricks which are so challenging, but they must learn how to do them correctly and cunning enough. If this trick is performed incorrectly, you may end up taking an accidental bite out of the wrong coin and then finish your magic show with a missing tooth. Expert magicians become very skilled at being deceptive so that they’re able to move on to other more difficult tricks later on.
Behind The Sawing Trick
First of all, this is NOT a trick that should be tried at home, because it requires you to have special equipment. Remember when we revealed to you the chopping the assistant trick? Well, this one is quite similar to that. There is a secret compartment where the assistant is able to protect their body from getting mutilated by the saw.
In order for the assistant to avoid danger, they must tuck their legs away; failing to do so can result in a situation we don’t even want to detail for you. To create the illusion that the assistant is being chopped in half, fake feet are placed at the end of the table. To the audience, it looks like the assistant is sawed in half but after the magician “puts her back together,” she manages to walk away unharmed. Hmmm… so the magician is a healer too.
Bending The Spoon
Have you ever been out at a fancy restaurant when a magician comes around to perform a trick for your table? Maybe they performed the bending spoon trick leaving you stunned with pasta dangling out of your open mouth. They take the spoon from your very table, in order to prove to you that they haven’t brought along their own. They then make the stainless steel silver bend.
You look around, confused, wondering whether the manager of the restaurant is about to come around and kick the magician out of his restaurant for damaging the restaurant’s property. And then, out of nowhere, the magician restores the spoon to its original form. This trick is a classic and it’s one that’s quite easy to pull off if performed correctly. If you want to learn how to wow your audience members, then keep reading to find out the secret.