For a long time I didn’t want to do the Torn and Restored Card trick, and decided that if I ever was going to do it, it’d probably be Brent Braun’s Torched and Restored, simply because of the practicality and efficiency of it. If you know the method then you’d know what I mean when I say I’d want to alter it so that the card can be more freely handled at the onset — there are plenty of dodges that allow you to get into position after that — and I might want to try scoring the card ahead of time so that there are burn marks on the back that sort of show the restoration points… but it’s still a decent routine.

I never totally bought into the piece-by-piece restoration approach, such as what you get with Yves Doumergue’s Ripped and Restored or Guy Hollingworth’s Reformation. I’m going to chalk that one up to personal taste rather than saying there’s an inherent flaw in that approach. To me, if you’re going to put that much work into a Torn and Restored X effect that’s meant to play from a distance, it’s better to toss cards altogether in favour of a tissue and/or newspaper, where there’s a bit more purity to the prop. Something about the necessary coziness for a piece-by-piece restoration suggests sleight-of-hand dynamics are in play, only with pieces of cards rather than entire cards. At least with Braun’s flash restoration there’s less of that feeling, and while a flash restoration puts a bit more heat on the idea that the card was never ripped to begin with, Braun’s approach does allow for some up-front proofs (again, which can be heightened even further by letting them examine the card more freely at the beginning, although this is still just me imagining a technique that I think ought to work without having fully tried it out). But in any case, that became a moot point after I got a chance to watch Paul Harris’s True Astonishments.

So, Ye Olde Magick Blogge’s Favourite Torn and Restored Card Routine is… [drumroll]

Charlie Frye’s Ripped and Fryed!

To me, this routine is the best of a lot of worlds. The tongue-in-cheek sawing a lady in half presentation, combined with a very, very nice illusion of the card being ripped in half, a strong display of both halves, finished with a very nice restoration of the card (Charlie does it instantly). The preparation isn’t too much of a hassle, and could conceivably be done with a borrowed deck (assuming the lender doesn’t mind having one card permanently damaged and the other one with strong folds in it).

A quick hunt on Youtube brought up a kid doing it for his webcam with melodramatic music playing in the background. I’ll let you go find it for yourselves if you’re interested in seeing it done. The execution of it isn’t as perfect as it could be, but it ought to be enough to show its merits. And in Charlie’s hands it’s even better. I’m still not sure if I’m ever going to start doing the Torn and Restored Card, but if I did, I’d go with Charlie’s in a heartbeat.