He's also selling them on his website http://www.holyshoot.com/

There are some outstanding magicians who work with thimbles. I love to see them work.

However, how much of the under 25 year-old population have any idea what they were?

Bob Sanders
Magic By Sander

PS --- I think that has absolutely nothing to do with entertainment value. But it certainly has to upset the "ordinary object" folks.

If you think they don't know what a thimble is, ask young gals if they know how to "darn" socks!!!

Posted: Mar 11, 2008 9:37am
If you don't want to use thimbles, per se, do what I used to do... I rolled a dollar bill around a finger tip. Made some big rolls for changes, and longway for stretching.

Use cane tips, bottle caps... look around and THINK.

White board marker caps make for some nice thimbles....

I regularly do thimbles for college students, age 18-21. I ask them if they know what "these things" are. They answer, "THIMBLES".

Best regards,
Glenn Godsey

I may be crazy but I really like the routine that comes with the Vernet nesting thimbles. I thought it was quite well worked out.

Rik,
I agree with you about the Vernets. ANd even if you use a different routine, you get a lot of thimbles for your money. The Vernets are also some of the best for back palming, something I've not been able to master with the Fakinis.
Marc

What do you think of the Porper thimbles?

Depends on the routine. They are BRASS NESTS OF TWO and well made.

A couple of years ago, I found a little plastic green thimble and started practicing again. It is one of my favorite openers. It's amazing. One does a complicated coin routine, silk effects and cap-in-the-bottle effects, and they keep asking about that little thimble! That tells ya something...

Doug

See my thimble routine at http://www.petebiro.com "Pete's Peeper".

Somewhere around 40 or so years ago at Jay Marshall's Magic Inc., Geoffrey Buckingham gave me a rather long tutorial on how to make wooden thimbles stage worthy by embedding rhinestones in them. (Somewhere around 42 stomes per thimble.) I made two sets of five and, true to Geoffrey's word, when illuminated with stage lighting they were almost like fire on the finger tips. Really quite beautiful.

I spoke with Shoot Ogawa today and he still has sets of thimbles he'll sell you.

Pete : I just love your "Beer Cap Vanish" too. Need to patent that one!
Fortasse

Are there any routines that have been designed specifically for use with the Porper thimble set?

One resource not yet mentioned is Tarbell. Good stuff in there as well.

If you want to cover a metal thimble in rhinestones, use the "Slip Stop" thimbles. They have no rim, but are covered in rectangular divots. This is an ideal base for Epoxy to hold flat-backed, glass rhinestones. I create a rim of larger, colored stones with a matching very large stone in the top. Once the glue sets, I fill in the remainder of the area with very small white rhinestones. This set up will allow color changes, and the larger stones around the rim create a very nice rim with which to back palm. Glass is better then plastic, for the latter will become scratched and lose it's brilliance. The gent above was right - under theatrical lights or in sunlight, they look like they are on fire.

I too own some Vernet nesting thimbles. Very nicely made, but nearly impossible to separate without them talking.

Wooden thimbles are nice, but are very bulky. Perhaps I will get the thimble drill from Woodcraft and start making my own.
I have always thought of using wooden thimbles and stamping them with my contact info, to be used as calling cards. Though the recipient would have to have pretty good sight...

Go to lybrary.com they have great information on thimble magic.

My latest e-Book on the "Easter Bunny Parade" in The Wizards' Journal #36 shows how I evolved Bob Nelson's "Peter Rabbit Goes to Town" into thimble magic using vinyl finger puppets instead of thimbles, and then segued into a cup and ball routine using large plastic Easter eggs and small plush bunnies and ducks. I was surprised to discover that a thimble move I developed for use with the finger puppets (which cling to your fingers better than thimbles) was nowhere to be found in the thimble literature, so I included it in the e-Book under the name "Pinky Pass." Not too many uses for the pinky finger in a thimble routine, but for finger puppets, it comes in very handy.

Couple old quotes from this thread. I'm kind of surprised more people didn't mention Joe and his incredible work with thimbles. I have the book along with his dvd and 3 tubes of his thimbles in various colors as well as a thimble effect he sold as a stand alone effect. He actually went out and had his thimbles made to his own specifications. Some of the moves cannot be done well with the "cheap plastic thimbles" that have a bit of an odd shape. His look like real thimbles (only they are colored plastic). His are "Inexpensive" but not "cheap" and are designed to work with all the moves, switches, vanishes, appearances... that he teaches in the book and on the dvd. They come in a tube of 10 thimbles for only $15 and you can mix and/or match from 7 different vibrant colors. http://joemogar.tripod.com/id7.html

I have found the hand / finger exercises he teaches as a warm up, help my coin magic too (as far as dexterity).