Home-Made Gadgets - Prepare Early for Christmas! In this Issue are Over Fifty Items which will be Useful During the Festive Season.

By Anon

"Home-Made Gadgets" is a fantastic vintage guide to hand-making a variety of useful household items. From cheap and cheerful Christmas decorations to plant pots and decorative glassware, this volume will appeal to those with an interest in money-saving handicraft ideas. Contents include: "Tricks with a Watch", "An Easy Thought-Reading Trick", "Use This Conjurer's Bag for Amateur Conjuring", "Turn your Ash into Cash", "A Table-Top Railway", "Decorative Glassware from Jam Jars", "Cheap Christmas Decorations", "Make Decorative Containers From Tin Cans", "Plastic Toast Rack", etc. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: White Press
• Release date: Feb 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781528783729

Book preview

TRICKS WITH A WATCH

TELL your friends that your watch has a mind of its own—and then demonstrate the fact that it can count. Every good watch should be able to count, you can say, otherwise it would never know the right time!

Ask your victim to think of a number, not more than twelve. Every time you tap your watch with a pencil, ask him to add one to this number and stop you when the total number is twenty. When he says stop! he will be surprised to find that the pencil is pointing to the number on the dial of the watch that he first thought of.

The secret is in the way you tap out the intervals on the watch. The first tap is made on 5. Each succeeding tap then works around the dial until twelve. Then tap anti-clockwise around the dial and you will find stop always occurs at the initial number thought of.

You can add to the mystery by making the first taps all round the dial, provided the eighth tap is on twelve and all succeeding taps then work anti-clockwise, one at a time, around the dial.

AN EASY

THOUGHT-READING TRICK

THIS thought-reading trick is easy to accomplish without practice. The performer asks his victim to open a book at any page he likes. Whilst hé is out of the room or turns his back, the page number is noted and the book closed again. Returning to the book the performer appears to ponder for a while and then opens it at exactly the same page as selected.

The trick lies in cementing a long, thin hair to the front cover, as shown in the sketch. This will normally be invisible. When the book is opened the hair will fall on to that particular page and be trapped there when the book is closed again. The performer knows of this marker and re-opens the book accordingly.

USE THIS

Conjurer’s Bag

FOR AMATEUR CONJURING

THE changing bag is one of the simplest props for the home conjurer. It is very easy to make and can be used for a variety of tricks.

The bag itself should be made from soft, black material. When it is sewn up a false lining of the same material is incorporated. In other words the finished bag really has a false pocket in it.

All the tricks work on variations of the same theme. A knotted handkerchief is dropped in the bag, for example, and immediately withdrawn again with the knot untied. Of course, the unknotted handkerchief is actually a duplicate of the first previously hidden in the false pocket of the bag.

TURN YOUR ASH INTO CASH!

THOUSANDS have tried to give up smoking by taking dope of various kinds, for there are all kinds of weird and wonderful preparations on the market that are supposed to create a dislike for tobacco . . . we know quite a few chaps who smoked twice as much after using some of these magic pills!

Then there are the fellows who tell you that the best way is