The Genii Forum

Ok, after 6 long years, back to the original topic of this thread.

Does anyone have a good source (online or in the San Francisco Bay Area) of gray real latex dental dams for this great trick. I've gotten green nitrile dams from my dentist but, at best, I get 1 or 2 uses out of the them before pinholes develop. The real latex dams I had years ago were far superior. The dental suppliers that I've found that have them only sell to licensed dentists & the online oral sex protection suppliers (can I say that here?) seem to only have them in "flavors."

JMD

Excerpt from Genii, Vol. 6, no. 5, january 1942

Leslie Guest used Dental Dam for a trick entitled Ball and Silk Transposition


Excerpt from Genii, Vol. 29, no. 3, november 1964.

In 1964, Roy Leroy sold Dental Dam (52-in sq.) for $2.25.

Dealers Writes :

ROY LEROY

Municipal Yatch Basin
Daytona Beach, Fla 32014

Excerpt from Genii, Vol. 44, no. 10, october 1980

Lloyd E. Jones reviewed a book by Ian Sutz entitled The Best Dam Tricks

I buy them from Patterson Dental Supply in San Antonio. I think I paid about $7.00 for a box of the gray ones last time I bought some.

To close the loop on my question...

I looked up Patterson Dental Supply online, but they don't have a location very close to me and, although they do sell online, the registration to get an account in order to place an order had required fields that I couldn't fill in because I'm not a dentist (or other dental professional) so I gave up on Patterson (there might be a way around this if you call them, I was too lazy to do that).

Googling "Dental Supplies" I found Pearson Dental Supplies. They have an option to order online with a credit card without setting up an account. When I placed the order, there was a required field that threw me for a second for "Title" after "Name." I thought about my real life title (Environmental Engineer) but, since I was ordering these Dams for magic, I put "Magician." Since there were other fields (non-required) for Dental License No. Business Name, etc., I wasn't sure If they would sell to someone outside of dentistry but I got an email response for my order & the dams arrived 4 days later. No questions asked. Total price $35.53 for 2 boxes of 36 dams each. ($14.25/box+$7.03 shipping).

I am curious about one thing. I wonder if someone in their order processing department saw "Magician" in the title box and said to him/herself, "Another magician? What the hell do they do with all these dental dams?"

JMD

You could probably buy the sheets a lot easier from the sex shops in your local town, or buy mail order.

Has anyone tried using latex gloves to get the necessary squares?

Matt Field

Not me but some french magicians use it and say that it works.
Try also chirurgical gloves.

Richard Kaufman wrote:You could probably buy the sheets a lot easier from the sex shops in your local town, or buy mail order.

Richard,

I looked there first (I got a bazillion sex shop hits when I first put "Dental Dams" into Google) but Plain Gray Latex Unflavored Unscented Dental Dams are not what the sex shops sell. Nitrile? Easy. Green, blue, purple? No prob. Vanilla, mint scented/flavored? Got it. Plain Gray Latex Unflavored Unscented Dental Dams? Who would want those??

Dental supply seemed the best answer, and now that I've found Pearson, I'm set.

JMD

Matthew Field wrote:Has anyone tried using latex gloves to get the necessary squares?

Matt Field

I've tried gloves but they're usually natural colored (light beige) and don't seem to be as opaque as gray dams. Also, even with he largest size, you can't really cut a 6 in. square, which is what I was looking for. Cutting the latex can be tricky. Even razor sharp blades can snag since latex both stretches and "grabs" when you try to cut it.

However, if you only need smaller pieces, & the color isn't a concern, latex gloves do work. (I believe that if you do a search here on the Forum, you'll find a post about someone (sorry, I don't remember the name but someone here will probably fill in this hole in my memory) doing a coin routine wearing a latex glove and ending by passing a coin thru the glove onto his palm using the Dam Principle [Hmmm, I like the sound of that]).

JMD

Hi,

where can I find a description of the cited effect?? It really sounds cool and I never heard about it so far.

Best
Tom

P.S.: Concerning spelling (besides of sleight) Please also keep in mind thate there a myn non native speakers here in the forum. Genii is read all over the world.

The effect is simple: a coin that is sitting on top of a sheet of rubber is pressed through it: VISIBLY. You can see the coin melt through the rubber and there is no hole afterward. You can even let the spectator push the coin through with one finger. Ingenious.

Tom Bennett wrote:Hi,

where can I find a description of the cited effect?? It really sounds cool and I never heard about it so far.

If you mean the "Dam Trick", basically you have a coin lying on a latex sheet that's stretched over the mouth of a glass. Anyone (magician, spectator) can press on the coin & it instantly penetrates through the sheet into the glass. It's as close to looking like real magic as anything I've ever seen. The only response I've gotten when I've shown it, is sputtering gasps and bugged eyes.

I believe that Lubor Fiedler is the originator. The most recent easily available source I know of is "The Klutz Book of Magic."

JMD

P.S. This is what happens when you write a response, get totally distracted by something else, and then hit submit before looking to see if someone else answered the question during the interim.

This trick was recently exposed on the Masked Magician. I got an email from someone I performed it to ten years ago gloating that he now finally knew how it was done! It's a great, ingenious trick that people remember for a long time. I hope it isn't overexposed.

It's also become one of the most popular tricks to demo for the public. At my local county fair, there was a booth that's a travelling magic shop. This trick went over bigtime, along with Nickels to Dimes, Svengali Decks, Glorpy, and the Professor's Nightmare.

I remember, a few years back, someone marketing a coin tru table routine - with gloves. It made for a pretty easy palm. The kicker was that the coin would go right through the glove.

That was Doug Bennett.

My dear friend Mark Sicher also performed the coin through rubber glove in his "Dental Act." He dressed up as a dentist, with white lab coat, and performed a full routine with toothbrushes, false teeth, silver fillings, bibs, and rubber gloves. I will eventually put his act up on Youtube (with blessings from his parents). He won the Ron MacMillan and IBM close-up competitions with this act, and also performed it numerous times at Fechter's and FISM.

In his book "adult magic" Paul Daniels explains the dental dam trick, and he reccomends cutting up a high strength clear condom..
I tried it.If you dont cut the thing up straightm it tears, but it does work.

Dale Shrimpton wrote:In his book "adult magic" Paul Daniels explains the dental dam trick, and he reccomends cutting up a high strength clear condom..
I tried it.If you dont cut the thing up straightm it tears, but it does work.

As the sheets of the stuff are pennies, surely using a condom each time would a) be more expensive and b) be somewhat icky?

Dale Shrimpton wrote: he reccomends cutting up a high strength clear condom..
I tried it.If you dont cut the thing up straightm it tears, but it does work.

It is highly recommended that you remove the condom from your appendage before using the scissors.

Matt Field

Matthew Field wrote:

Dale Shrimpton wrote: he reccomends cutting up a high strength clear condom..
I tried it.If you dont cut the thing up straightm it tears, but it does work.

It is highly recommended that you remove the condom from your appendage before using the scissors.

Matt Field

I wish you had posted that about 9 minutes ago.

I'm going to the hospital now.

More later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAGdrpcJp70
Actor who plays the magic shop owner in the show demonstrates Lubor Fiedler' s "Dental Dam and coin " at 9: 56 . This is 1964 . Is this when the trick came out ?? Also I think the little boy in the episode grew up to be Rob Zabrecky. Ha Ha.

Lubor Fiedler published his 'An Almost Impossible Coin Penetration' trick first in 1958 in the East German magic magazine "Zauberkunst" http://www.lybrary.com/zauberkunst-04-j ... 30601.html It even includes a photo of Lubor pushing the coin through.