Classic Illusionist Tricks: Linking Rings
One of the most popular tricks done by stage musicians is the “linking rings” trick, performed using four or more seemingly solid steel rings which are used to carry out certain seemingly impossible tricks. The trick depends on having “gimmicked” rings, which are fixed in some way to be easily linked and unlinked, as well as seemingly being passed through one another as you wish.
The real trick to carrying out this act is not the use of gimmicked rings – any illusionist can link and unlink rings that have been fixed for this purpose. The trick is in how the illusionist sells the performance. In order to make it appear that the solid rings have been passed through one another without effort, it is necessary to manipulate the rings at the point of “contact”.
What makes this difficult is the fact that the rings have to appear solid at the beginning of the trick, but genuinely linked during it before returning to their separate, solid state at the end. The “gimmick” is that the rings are manipulated to have small breaks in them which are invisible to the eyes of the audience.
It goes without saying that if the breaks are invisible to the audience, they will require careful handling to become “linked” and to pass through one another as the illusion requires. Additionally, when showing that the rings are all solid, the illusionist needs to “count” one or more rings twice, hiding the gimmicked rings from the audience.