The effect is well known to most magicians. You take a salt cellar and pour some salt into your clenched fist. You open your hand and the salt has vanished and then you reach into the air close your hand and then suddenly and seemingly never ending stream of salt pours out of your previously empty hand.

Fred Kaps and many other have made the long salt pour effect into the classic that is a great classic. If you have seen Kaps perform this finale to his great manipulative act you will remember that, as the salt pours out of his hand, the orchestra starts up with the final music for his act. The music is almost at an end but still the salt continues to pour. Fred signals the orchestra to keep the music rolling and it starts up again and this happens several times and it seems as if the salt is never ever going to stop pouring out of his hand. Then to finally finish as the salt comes to an end Fred rubs his hands together for a moment and throws the gimmick, that he used, into the Top-it in the tail of his evening tail coat. His hands are empty and he is clean.

Fred Kaps used to pick up his gimmick from his table but as he was such an excellent manipulator and could use misdirection better than most he had no problem ditching his gimmick but I have seen others fail miserably trying to dump the gimmick!

There are some wonderful gimmicks available to use and they vary in price from cheap to very, very expensive. They all have on thing in common. You have to load them into your hand and ditch them somewhere at the end of the performance.

If you have a gimmick full of salt in your hand and you slowly pour out streams of salt the audience wonder if you are holding some kind of container so the end ditch is very difficult to do because the audience have their eyes on your hand and wonder what is in it.