A trick is something a whore does for money. Or CANDY!

January 19, 2009 9:40 PM

MagicFilter: How best to shoot sparks from your hand?

There's an episode of How I Met Your Mother where Barney shoots sparks out from his hand and catches them with his other hand, to reveal what he guesses the person he's showing's reaction will be.

This cracked me up. More importantly, I thought how dorkyawesome it'd be to shoot sparks like that.

I've found a Funken Ring online, but the Youtube videos make it look unwieldy and woefully underpowered. (Specifically because it shoots out sparks that Barney "catches" with his other hand.)

I can't find a YouTube clip of him doing so, but it looks real enough and I can't imagine that they're CGIing the sparks... so, ideas?

posted by disillusioned to grab bag (3 answers total)

This is certainly more powerful than the Funkenring. I've never used one, so do your own research.

Understand that anything that shoots sparks out of your hand is going to be "unwieldily." The only way they seem to be, uh, wieldly is through judicious editing (when used in a TV show) or expert misdirection to obtain and ditch the item (when used by a stage magician).
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 10:44 PM on January 19, 2009

spark ejectors are cool, cool, cool.

there's a magic shop here in seattle that i go to specifically to buy the agents that power the ejectors: flash paper and flash powder.

flash paper combusts on contact with high heat and vanishes without a trace. the powder ignites as a shower of sparks just like your asking for. if you wrap the powder in the paper and toss as it explodes you've got a flaming shower of sparks.

i smoke so i usually have a high heat source that no one notices just hanging off my face. slip a little of the flash into my hand and whenever i want, kaboom, the mens all swoon. if you don't smoke then the ejector is a good bet, but surreptitious it is not.
posted by artof.mulata at 11:55 PM on January 19, 2009 [1 favorite]

I've used a couple of these kits to amaze my niece & nephew, and have been reasonably pleased.

...and yeah, it is dorkyawesome.
posted by aramaic at 6:43 AM on January 20, 2009 [1 favorite]