I want to put this on the table. Every once in a blue moon you may not be able to trip the knot. As you know you should always have an out. I would like to hear some of your outs in this situation.

Get the book, The Annotated Magic of Slydini if you don't already have it. It has great advise on outs and avoiding the situation before it starts. Bill Malone also has some tips on this.

Sometimes Slydini would hand the silks to a man and challenge him to untie them. He would turn to someone else and say, "Time him!". After he was done, Slydini would use one of the other corners and proceed with his routine. The main point should be avoiding the moment. You have an out - plan to never use it.

Scott Compton

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of hard knots!

Bob Sanders
Magic By Sander

If you are doing it right, they will always trip! If they are not tripping, you haven't practiced enough! However, if the silk gets damp (i.e., your hands or the spec hands are sweaty or wet, or you're performing in an especially humid environment), the knots won't slide along the silk. Until they dry out, they are basically stuck in place (unless you manually untie them one by one).

I also do Slydini's silk routine (the full routine with the split knot ending). In learning the routine, this "sticking" happened to me a few times, so I know what to look out for. The bad news is that if the knots don't slide in performance, there is nothing you can do to save the situation.

One comic solution (that I think Bill Malone mentions on his DVD) is to cut the knots off with a pair of scissors. It's a good comic relief moment, and I do cut & restored rope so the scissors are always available. If it did happen to me in performance, this would be my solution. OK, I now have to get a new pair of silks, but I think that's a small price to pay.

Bye for now

Harold

The two main things that ruin silks are punctures and stains. "Pulls" in a silk is really the result of a puncture. (Nylon will do this too!)

The silks I learned on from Tony Slydini (in the late 60s) were the older silks from Japan with the hems that were first rolled and then stitched. The trick is to make sure that you pull by the two hems together rather the single layers of silk or nylon. The newer silks from China have a 2mm very tight and flat hem that works much easier. But the trick is to still always put the stress on the hems and not the single layers of the silk, which will ultimately result in a puncture. (Try using the ball of the thumb and the side of the index finger down at the second joint to hold the "pull" silk in BOTH hands. Giving the silk a slight twist will also help assure that you are pulling by the hem and not causing a stress puncture in the flat part of the silk.

The momme of the silk is not a factor at all here. Thread count might help but momme is by weight and has no relationship to the size of the threads, opaqueness, or thread count in any way. (In 38 years as an importer, I've never seen silk described by thread count. For wool and cotton it is common.)

Personally, I've never experienced the moisture problem and therefore, I'm no help there. However, as an old cowboy it was a common practice to toss the hemp (natural fiber) rope into a watering trough to make it stiffer and hold a loop open better. (Cowboys like stiffer rope to catch heads and horns and a softer rope for throwing traps to catch back heels.)

This is a great trick. I enjoyed teaching it one-on-one while in Florida last week. At one point we even used one nylon and one pure silk because that is what was available. That was a first for me too!

Bob Sanders
Magic By Sander

I had a couple of silks made from a parachute which is a little heavier than Slydini's but never get jammed. I concur with Bob Sanders that it has never really been an issue.

I am in south Texas and hesitate in purchasing the silks due to the fact of high humidity and wet hands. I hate to start out on the wrong foot to begin with.

Any comments from those who have experienced using the silks in a humid environment? Or should I move on?

Thanks

Candini

Posted: Mar 9, 2007 5:32pm
Quote:


On 2007-02-06 22:13, Scott Compton wrote:


Sometimes Slydini would hand the silks to a man and challenge him to untie them. He would turn to someone else and say, "Time him!". After he was done, Slydini would use one of the other corners and proceed with his routine. The main point should be avoiding the moment. You have an out - plan to never use it.

Scott Compton



Sounds like a great out!