I'm still not buying the magnet theory. The nails do come up from the board though.

I'm going with spring loaded nails that pop up when he brings the muzzle down onto a release mechanism hidden in the board.

stereodan,

haha weird. firstly i did suspect it was done like that, but it seemed incredibly hard to do that way. anyway i too saw the fool us performance the other night, and about 30 mins ago i decided to google for the other version of the trick so i could compare the nails. and oddly enough, my google search brought me right back to 2+2 where you had already done it about 20 mins earlier. awesome work.

there's a fool us thread in OOTV if you want to come join us in there

lulz

this is way to dangerous, so a slip of a finger would leave teller screwed?

huh, op's link is from jkl

in the lateest episode of fool us, they finish with this exact trick, if you want to see that trick, here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=223lD19qSzk

if you watch this video^
you'll see that they use the exact same gun

btw, holy **** bing videos suck

I'm now convinced that if there were nails in the gun, he would show us nails in the gun. Since he doesn't, there isn't.

How's that for a flipflop?

^o shizzle son

Doesn't that sound incredibly complicated and error-prone to you? Keep with Occam's razor, it'll do you good.

Not if you think of it this way: imagine specially-made nails. Instead of a head at one end and a sharp point on the other, the craftsmen in our magic shop make a two-headed nail. Well, several nails, actually.

Now we drill bunch of holes in the board. In each hole, we insert a small spring, like the one you might find inside a pen. Next, we insert our special nail. We push the nail down upon the spring, until the nail head is just about flush with the surface of the board.

Of course, as soon as we let go of the nail, the spring will pop it right out our hole, so we need to carve in a little catch near the hole's opening. Now we push in the nail, and make sure a piece of the head gets tucked under the catch, to keep it in place. Our mousetrap is now armed.

All we have to do is nudge it free of the catch, and our nail will pop out. We'll need to figure out a second catch, so the nail doesn't fly out of the board, but our guys in the machine shop who manufacture these magic tricks should be able to figure that one out without much fuss.

why the lulz?

i could have quoted a bunch more people, didn't really mean to single you and fsy out.

just loling at how adamant people were that the gun was firing nails because they had used a nailgun once, and how they insisted everyone who thought the nails were in the board was a ******.

Penn says he can't remember..but Teller is smarter and figures everything out. So Teller has a button he holds that controls when the nailgun fires. Is why Penn knew shooting him in the neck was ok. Teller would never hold the button then.

I mean, I guess, but a simple magnet ensures not only that the nail comes out every time, but that the head of the nail stays with the tip of the gun.

Go back a page, we already figured it out.

You'd think the force of Penn's hitting the board over and over might dislodge a few other random nails tho.

The only thing this makes me wonder is... if the nails are spring loaded from under the board and possibly release with a pen-clicker style mechanism, what difference does it make that he "release" the nails in the exact same pattern? I would venture he has practiced the trick so much that the patterns are similar (because he practices it that way) but don't match exactly.

Yeah I guess you're right.

I think it's hilarious how quiet you got after being proven utterly and completely wrong.

This just further proves that Penn & Teller are brilliant performers and people believe what they want to believe and will refuse "the truth" at all costs if it contradicts their beliefs.

You were right about one thing, he does explain the trick. He explains that most memorization acts are in fact, tricks. They are just lies. Which they don't mind you knowing because they believe it's morally wrong to do dangerous stunts because it makes the audience complicit with unnecessary risk.

Then he puts the gun directly to Tellers jugular and says. "If you have any doubt about this being a lie *shoots the gun* I think that proves it".

If at that point you thought there was ANYTHING in that gun that could project outward, then the you couldn't have been more wrong.

I've seen their show live in Vegas and it amazes me how many people saw their bullet catching trick and left the theater thinking that they actually fired real bullets or blanks from their guns and believe it as vehemently as you believed there were nails in that gun.

That's dangerous, utterly stupid and no insurance company would EVER allow such an act to be performed in front of a live audience.

There are NO nails in that gun. Just a trick that relies on the fact that common sense isn't actually common at all...

No, I didn't think there were any nails in the gun when he put it to Teller's neck.

My explanation was good and may still be correct.

I stand by my original post that half a dozen people said I was ******ed for.

There is ZERO chance that when Penn puts the gun up to Teller's neck he is holding a loaded 'ready to fire' nail gun.

How they create the illusion of the nails with the board is their business.

I saw this act my last time to Vegas. Penn said that the gun was making a strange blowing sound a few minutes in. He continued the act for a minute, then called a guy onto the stage who he said was his safety manager or something to that extent. He checked the nail gun and then they decided that they would not be able to finish the act. He apologized to the audience for not being able to complete it after explaining that it was a trick which requires a lot of memorization and focus, but due to the gun making a strange noise he was afraid it might launch a nail at the wrong time.

That is so when you see it done somewhere else, it is amazing! Or it probably was just broken and he was afraid it wouldn't make the "woosh" noise.

I think it was more that he was afraid the safety mechanism could malfunction and launch a nail into his hand when it is only supposed to fire into a more solid surface.

or it was an excuse to stop the trick because something else was messed up on his fake nail board