Hammer juggling

[Jenn]

Comment: Would be impressive if I could believe it. But it looks like they go to C.G. hammers at some point to me.

Notice how for a large portion of the sequence, all that is visible is one hammer at a time coming in and out of the camera frame...

[One-Fang]

I don't understand the request for explanation. I've seen far more dangerous and thrilling juggling than that. It looks rather ordinary. Certainly nothing I could do myself, but not exactly "oooo, that can't be real!"

[Ariadne]

Originally Posted by One-Fang

I don't understand the request for explanation. I've seen far more dangerous and thrilling juggling than that. It looks rather ordinary. Certainly nothing I could do myself, but not exactly "oooo, that can't be real!"

Yeah, same here.

I must be really tired because when I saw the thread title I thought this was going to involve parachute pants. It took a few seconds before it occurred to me that the video was not going to show that Hammer juggling.

[cdav1313]

Originally Posted by One-Fang

I don't understand the request for explanation. I've seen far more dangerous and thrilling juggling than that. It looks rather ordinary. Certainly nothing I could do myself, but not exactly "oooo, that can't be real!"

Well, he does hammer a spike into the ceiling while juggling which seems rather difficult/unlikely. Its not like he's just juggling 3 hammers.

[jw]

Originally Posted by cdav1313

Well, he does hammer a spike into the ceiling while juggling which seems rather difficult/unlikely. Its not like he's just juggling 3 hammers.

I've seen an entertainer do something like this done before. I would imagine that because the head of the hammer is much heavier than the handle, it would make it easy enough to control.

[Logoboros]

If the hammer footage itself isn't faked, I would certainly suggest that the nail is being driven into a pre-drilled hole, so that it doesn't actually take much force from the hammers to nudge it in. I would imagine that if the hammers were driving the nail straight into wood, the deflection after the initial strike would be too much to maintain control over.

[RivkahChaya]

I can juggle, and I used to be pretty good-- good enough to get hired at some Ren fair type stuff, and kid's parties.

The guy who taught me, who was a high school friend now makes a living juggling. He spent time with Cirque de Soleil, and does street performing, where one of his tricks is riding a 14-foot unicycle while juggling 7 garden sickles.

Anyway, hitting a mark isn't that hard. We used to play a sort of "horse," where we'd juggle, and toss the balls through hoops, then catch then after a bounce.

Yes, the hole is probably drilled, but other than that, the trick is probably real juggling, and not a camera or computer trick. It's probably important to the trick that the hammers are all new ad idetical, too, an that the nail is as high up as it is. Otherwise, the hammers would have to be flipped too fast to strike the nail with upward force.

[One-Fang]

Oh, is that what that noise was? Totally missed the nail first time viewing.

Okay, pretty cool. But yeah, not all that difficult.

[RivkahChaya]

Originally Posted by One-Fang

Oh, is that what that noise was? Totally missed the nail first time viewing.

Okay, pretty cool. But yeah, not all that difficult.

Did I sound like I was pooh-poohing the trick? I didn't mean to do that. It's a good trick. "Not all that difficult" is relative. It wouldn't be difficult for a consummate juggler who put in the effort to practice. Generally, all three object tricks are harder than three-plus tricks. Just juggling five balls is really hard compared to doing showy stuff with three of something. But this is still a really good trick, and the guy gets points for cleverness if he thought it up. Plus, he probably didn't do it the first time. He started with just one hammer, and spent some time practicing just tossing one from hand to hand, hitting the nail (which is probably when he decided to drill a hole), then worked up to two, then three.

He may have made a few takes, as well, and posted the one where he hit the nail every single time.

[Ulkomaalainen]

Since the accompanying text is in German, I'd like to mention that a German hardware store ("Obi") gets prominent mention ("Hi there, now we're showing you a real Obi hammer ad"), though I doubt from the context, that Obi has any connection with this and was only put in for reference to some ad I don't know. The rest is lame puns by the juggler, and stuff that amounts to "Oooohs" and "Aaaahs" by the camera guy.

I saw a thing about this video a while agon on German television. They had found the video on the net and were trying to prove/disprove that it was real. They managed to juggle the hammers like the guy in the video, but didn't manage to hit the nail with the hammer head. After some searching they found the guy, who did the juggling in the video and he admitted, that the juggling was real, but the thing about the hammers driving the nail into the wood had been digitally faked. As far as I recall the whole thing was an ad for a German hardware store (note the logo on the bucket at the beginning of the video).