armsaw

I spent three months putting Kozak's Armsaw together. During the testing I felt like the saw was so dangerous that I got cold-chills thinking about strapping an unsuspecting (or so it seemed) audience member into this thing. I visited Bill Smith at his shop in Vegas and he showed me the original Thayer saw that Harry Anderson had once owned. Now,talk about dangerous.

Once the saw was finally on its legs and the radial arm mounted and working I started feeling like it just might work. I still hadn't at this point realized that if you install the blade backward it would be much less likely to actually sever someone's arm. I also started using several heavy duty rubber bands as drive belts instead ot the real thing to reduce torque and decrease the threat of mayhem. Ray Pierce gave me a major clue when he suggested using Hollander fittings to put the frame together. I met Ray courtesy of David Lichtman's great magician's bbs, MAGIC!. Prior to the advent of the Web both MAGIC! and The Spider Network gave magicians a place to chat and air their feelings.

Kozak's stage hands inspect the finished saw onstage at Pittsburgh's Riverfront Funny Bone for the run of Paul's WICKED show. This saw now belongs to Joe Givan and I built one additional for another Pittsburgh magician. I might build one more but that's about it.