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Comment by jandrese | Hacker News Reader

The big wooden sign in the jar is jaw dropping. I figure he must have cut it into sticks, fed them in, then glue it together then sand down and finish the outside to hide the lines.

I assume the padlock had to be disassembled and then reassembled inside the jar as well.

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The wooden sign is even more astonishing. Assuming that your guess is correct (sliced, inserted, glued), then the engraving on the front would need to take the kerf of the saw cut into account, or else it would show.

Wait, now that I think about it, I bet it was split rather than sawed. The photo on the site is fairly lo-res, but it does look like straight-grained wood that would split straight, and would seamlessly glue back up. And it would reduce the amount of surface work needed afterward. Each piece would key into the next.

> then the engraving on the front would need to take the kerf of the saw cut into account, or else it would show.

Or just engrave the pieces after they're cut while they're clamped together.

I was assuming that the wood was steamed and then compressed. It depends what sort of wood that is.

How would you split it without leaving tooling marks at the top though?

Split it, then remove the tooling marks by slicing off a bit of all the slices, then insert into the bottle.

Like kung fu fighters split boards. Hold it from the edge and give it a whack.

The deck of cards could be inserted by:

1. removing all the cards from the box

2. unfolding the box

3. rolling the box into a tube so it will fit into the bottle

4. unrolling and refolding the box in the bottle

5. roll each card, insert in bottle, unroll

6. put the cards back in the box

Of course, doing all this would be very tedious, and would be easier if one used some specialized tools, but it's doable.

Basically, all of them look like some form of disassembly, insertion, and reassembly inside the bottle. Much like ship-in-a-bottle. Still impressive, though.

Pretty much very similar to the ship in a bottle hobby. But then you look at something like this and are just like, wait did this dude seriously just unsew a pair of loafers and resew them inside the bottle? Wow.

https://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/459/2465/320/bottle05.jp...

That padlock below the neck is killing me.

I notice that the padlocks generally have laminated steel bodies, and are not solid brass. Presumably the procedure is to remove the rivets in the body, separate the laminations and feed each one in separately, then reassemble everything inside?

Insert a disassembled padlock (without the ear of the lock) thru the bottle neck, and reassemble it inside the bottle. Then, carefully hook the ear into the cork, and insert it into the bottle, then carefully attach the ear into one of the holes of the padlock.

Then fully insert the cork, and then use some shaking of the bottle to click the padlock into a locked position.

Or they just used magic.

It reminds me of a quote from Teller:

"Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect."

Cork in two parts - one that you can push all the way through, put the lock on, and then pull out and connect the outer part.

(this also match the twine in the cork)

Remember, it doesn't have to be a padlock, it just has to look like a padlock. The internals of it could be heavily modified to facilitate its assembly inside the bottle.

From an earlier comment:

> One unwritten rule with these things is that you can't "cheat". For example put an empty box of cards in the bottle and then fill it with sand. If it's a baseball, it's a baseball, not a balloon wrapped in leather.

But it doesn't have to functionally be a baseball, or a padlock. If it's a softened, ruined baseball with weak stitching that still counts. I'm pretty sure if you made a padlock with laminations held together by two halves of what would normally be a single riveted pin, that would count: or, you just make a hell of a rivet-seating machine that projects through a bottleneck, and do it for real. But the original functionality of the thing need not be preserved, necessarily. For instance, the metal might be weakened from bending and re-bending, but look normal.

I think there's retained functionality at least in the locking aspect - although, as you say, it might be weakened and not protective:

> "Find a piece of wood from the High Chaparral (Manginita wood). Drill Deck. Put case in bottle. Put cards in case. Put rope through deck. Tie knot. Put nut, bolt, and lock parts into bottle. Hold bolt with a magnet - screw nut on with dental floss. Assemble and lock padlock. Finally sign the pack of cards".

If you look at this one. You'll notice there's not enough vertical room in the bottle to for both the box and a card to slide in from the top. The bottle would need to be twice as tall.

http://bottlemagic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Cards-in-B...

Once the box is in the bottle, waiting for cards, then they don't need to stack. The card will unfurl as it clears the neck, and enters the box.

I'm sure the 52nd card is harder than the 1st, but there's wiggle room there.

EDIT: Your photo shows a cellophane-wrapped box. I got nothing for that part!

Probably another excruciating step - cellophane goes in, box goes in and is put in the cellophane, then the cards, then the cellophane cover is sealed.

Irrespective of whether this is the case or not, I am blown away!

I'm thinking you have the carton flat inside the cellophane and insert both.

How about this? Carefully take the cellophane off the box without ripping it, or maybe just make a cut in the bottom. Then put the pack of cards in the box as above. Then put the cellophane through the bottle's neck and slide it back over the deck of cards.

The note next to the picture with the wooden sign says, "Our venerable curator has gone nearly blind with a magnifying glass but has failed to find any sign of breaks or glue in this plank."

How reliable is that flavor text? There appears to be a few dark lines running horizontally (could just be more grain though).

It's probably reliable, since it's very easy to fit wooden arrows through small holes in the middle of a metal coin, even when they "apparently do not fit".

That's important because the edge of the board is right next to the glass so any imperfections would be caught instantly.

No particular need to sand down the outside. A veneer can be glued on. The veneer could be rolled up, inserted, unrolled, and then applied.

Possibly softened it through steam, look for "Impossible nail through wooden block" in this thread.

There are many woods that can be steamed compressed, and then re-expanded with boiling water.

I have a tough time believing there are any that can be compressed to a tenth of their original size and then rebound back to full size.

You can check Youtube for videos where people make an impossible nail-in-wood construction, and you'll see just how much you can deform it. It's quite remarkable.

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