I really like Baffo, sometimes known by it’s longer name “The Baffo Orange and Ring Box“, and was hoping to demonstrate it this weekend. Sadly, the main gimmick broke and I have been unable to fix it. The problem with 100 year old props is sometimes when you actually try to use them, they break 🙁
Anyway, this is a very clever idea created by Floyd Thayer and the method is certainly a fooler. Milson-Worth created a similar effect with their Orange Cabinet about sixty years later and although it uses a very different method (which has its good points and its bad) I prefer Baffo in most cases as it is more convincing and can be shown and handled much more cleanly than the Milson-Worth Orange Box (which can only be shown empty from a distance).
What I like about Baffo is their are two parts to the method and neither of them are particularly hard to build and are certainly easy to do yet they allow you to really perform a miracle. Although Thayer uses a bit of poetic license in the description of features below – the use of the phrase “no revolving panels, traps, cloth flaps” is particularly close to the mark, but the effect described really is possible.
Though if there was truth in advertising you would at least add after: “threaded on the cord, is found the borrowed ring” … “which is removed by the performer, cleaned off and handed back to the spectator for examination” 🙂
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