Scott Hood IBM TVP
Presenting Ring 49’s January 2026 Teaching Table
January 2026 and we’re off to a great start! I usually think of January as a slow month with people still getting over the Christmas season, but this month’s meeting was one of our best turn-out in quite a while. We had to put out extra seats.
After some basic announcements, including President Doug Hunt discussing his charity project and some assistance Scott Hood has been providing for a past member’s widow, we started as usual with our Teaching Table – this month lead by our own IBM TVP Scott Hood. Scott demonstrated and then discussed a very effective marketed trick called Prestige (well worth looking up). Scott combined this with an inflating bear prop to create a very effective and entertaining routine.
Then on to the main event. Our theme was loosely a follow-up on our December Christmas meeting with people bringing in holiday effects and table magic, but basically anything they wanted show.
Since the turn-out was so high we had a steady stream of performers. A new visiting member, Joseph, started us out with a couple of card tricks: a one ahead effect with a marked deck, and an effect using the Stebbins stack.
Victor Staniewski did a Christmas themed Temple Screen effect that could be customized for any special event. Calvin Cutts performed with a Merlin puppet (again, that could be event themed) to ‘find a card’ as well as a lollipop effect for children’s parties.
We had a lot of fun (both at the meeting and at the pub later) with a bill thru the rollers prop brought by Barry O. Ken McCreedy demonstrated the Chicago Opener effect.
Peter Wiltshire, who builds great props, demonstrated a couple of versions of an effect where he drops dice, or the other version, a ball bearing through a tube in a magical way (like a Strat-O-Sphere effect). Rick Rossini finished up with a fabulous ‘invisible purse’ coin effect.
Just listing the effects really doesn’t do justice to the benefit of the member interactions on evenings like this – especially with the turnout of talented performers we had, all adding wisdom and advice to advance follow magi’s skill. Thanks everyone for making this a great night.
Rene Chouinard