Has anyone seen a routine for this apparatus? Was it ever sold in magic stores?
Thanks
wk

Hello:

I believe it's still available from some dealers. It seems as though one of India-based manufacturers was making it and selling it through D. Robbins for a while. It involved three wooden tubes (rectangular in shape) and three balls. I have no idea of the quality.

Does this sound like the item you're refering to, or am thinking of something different?

Ron

Thanks. That IS the item-is their a routine for them-other than "cups and balls"?
With all the trap doors and levers, something creative might have been routined for it?

I found the effect for sale at Daytona Magic. Here's a description that might help.

http://www.daytonamagic.com/products/HAR......BES.html

Ron

Thanks. The equipment isn't small, or easy to manipulate-such as cups and balls. That's why I'm wondering if there is a unique approach to performing
this that will look like real magic.

I just picked up a set of these at an estate sale, but no instructions were with it. The apparatus is pretty much self-explanatory, but I'd still like to read the instructions that normally come with it.

Had a member email the instructions-from an old magic magazine-that shows with line drawings how the apparatus is to be demonstrated. The balls never are "covered", but rather are "rolled" across the table surface into the prone wooden tubes.

If you are handy, and are looking for something different, there is an effect in one of teh Fulves self working books ( Possibly paper, or maybe table magic) that uses a bottomless tube, into which you drop a ball. Inside, it vanishes, or appears.
Now it strikes me that you could construct 3 of these tubes, and produce a simalar effect as Harbins tubes, but without any complicated mechanics.

If these tubes are the ones they appear to be, then the plans for the tubes and Harbin's notes on using them are in 'Harbincadabra', a collection of Harbin's writings originally published in 'Abracadabra' magazine. The article is a couple of pages long; Harbin says that describing a routine is unnecessary since the props are essentially self-working. He provides two ways the tubes can be used to cause a ball to vanish, and comments that the conclusion to the routine could be all three balls appearing, or all three vanishing. The main benefit of the gimmickry seems to be that you can point the open end of the tube at the audience, and they can see that it is empty, once the ball has vanished. So any routine should probably use that 'move'. Again, I'm assuming we're talking about the same tubes; Harbin was a relentless inventor and there may be other ball and tube based ideas in his many writings.

Harbin writes that he created that effect because he felt the cups and balls didn't work on a stage (his venues were very large). Hence the balls being brightly colored and the largest size that will fit in the tubes. It's not clear whether he ever performed the effect, though he says that he did make up a set of the tubes and balls so it wasn't a total pipe dream.

It's a brief article; in truth it's probably not worth your while tracking it down, this post is almost as long as the article. It's certainly worth buying Harbincadabra for other reasons though...

The impression from the current web/print ads for the apparatus is the tubes are used upright, as "cups and balls"-but the reality is they lay on their sides, and the balls are rolled into and out of them. On a large enough stage table, with plenty of access to the tubes and balls, this might look magical to an audience, but doesn't the odds go up for a disaster if one of the balls goes rolling off the table and stops the performance?

The impression from the current web/print ads for the apparatus is the tubes are used upright, as "cups and balls"-but the reality is they lay on their sides, and the balls are rolled into and out of them. On a large enough stage table, with plenty of access to the tubes and balls, this might look magical to an audience, but doesn't the odds go up for a disaster if one of the balls goes rolling off the table and stops the performance?

It is an odd piece to be sure. It is not a pipe dream, as they are workable. These have the advantage of using larger balls without the worry of them being too large for typical sleight of hand. The tubes can be shown empty at any point in the routine... an advantage over many cup phases. Is this trick an improvement on the cups and balls? I doubt that. The fact that the tubes are so large for the size of the balls makes them somewhat unmatched to each other, although I can think of possibly working up some final loads that would ultimately fill the stage with stuff. Changing the balls to blocks is entirely workable, too.

There are/have been other effects involving balls and tubes, such as Thayer's Spooky Oookum, so a clever performer could find ways to combine ideas into a routine with variation. As it stands now, it is a shell game at best with the possible endings being somewhat blase.

As wkitwizard mentioned, care should be taken to avoid the balls rolling off the table. I supposed someone versed in Skee-Ball, Croquet, or Putt-Putt Golf would be able to hit the hole each and every time. I think otherwise, you should consider working this effect slowly to avoid disaster. I could also imagine that the balls can be placed into the tube while the tube is mouth toward the audience. They would see the ball actually in the tube, but it could still be shown empty a second later.