Bowly Tip Jar

Here is some­thing for you guys, who like fid­dling around in the work­shop (although I just did this on my kitchen table in 30 min­utes). All start­ed when I read Cody Fisher’s bril­liant ‘Bill in Lemon’ rou­tine. His rou­tin­ing is excel­lent, and I love the ploy with the bor­rowed ‘tip’ (the spectator’s bill).

I could­n’t get hold of the jar Cody uses (close to impos­si­ble to get in Europe), so I had to switch mate­ri­als. Here is what I came up with, it is a tip jar bowl actu­al­ly and it looks (and works) good. You should know Cody’s rou­tine, oth­er­wise the whole descrip­tion will not make too much sense for you. UK read­ers will have an advan­tage, because the big bowl and the plas­tic pint glass­es come from the UK …

Get a plas­tic fish bowl. This is used in bars for serv­ing drinks! Then get a sup­ply of poly­car­bon­ate pint glass­es. I absolute­ly love the UK, the pubs, and, of course, the pints (not only the glass­es, but the con­tent as well!). Now this is great that a com­mon pub item is used in a mag­ic trick! I found both on Ama­zon, a quick search for poly­car­bon­ate pint glass­es and plas­tic gold fish bowl will give the desired results..

First you will remove the bot­tom of a pint glass. I used a bore belt of appro­pri­ate diam­e­ter for this, but you could use a nor­mal saw as well for this.

Then with a qual­i­ty epoxy glue, fix the pint glass right into the fish­bowl and let it dry thor­ough­ly. Next step is to remove the bot­tom of the bowl with a Dremel like tool. You will end up with a sort of milk pitch­er thing.

The idea is to wedge the lemon with the hole side up in the pint glass, near the bot­tom.

Due to the fact that the poly­car­bon­ate is sort of flex­i­ble, it will jam there safe­ly. But you can eas­i­ly dis­lodge it by press­ing light­ly down on it. It will fall through the ‘tun­nel’ into your hand or wher­ev­er you want it to be.

Stuff some stage mon­ey into the com­part­ment. The tip jar bowl will look like its filled up to the rim with bills. Quite decep­tive and inno­cent.

Go ahead. Do some­thing with this baby! 😉