Quite a few years ago had a substitute teacher who brought in one of those old Coke bottles–the smallish ones with the thick glass.
About halfway down the bottle there were two openings in the glass–it looked like someone had taken an auger or some other device and chipped the holes open. Fitting between and through these two holes was a single piece of wood shaped like an arrow. The arrow “head” and “feathers” were much bigger than the hole openings. So visually, you have this Coke bottle “shot through” with this arrow, but the wooden arrow could not be removed due to the size of the aforementioned ends.
My friend and I sat there for hours trying to figure out how this was put together. The bottle appeared seamless. It was thick glass. Looked like an official Coke bottle of old. The wood that comprised the arrow was seamless. We even used a magnifying glass. No seals. No seams–just one piece of wood.
So… how was this done? The teacher wouldn’t spill the secret. That wood got through those holes somehow.
Feathers are farely pliable. Could the arrow slide freely, back and forth, through the holes? Perhaps the feathers were wrapped tightly, the arrow inserted backwards and then feathers unwrapped and fluffed up to look “too big” to fit.
Were actual feathers used? I’m a little confused. From the description it seems the entire arrow was carved from a single piece of wood. But if the “feathers” were wood shavings partly curled away from the arrow, then they might have been created after the arrow was stuck through.
The arrow was inserted, then the point was attached to it. sounds like the most likely explination.
The main part of the bottle was made, with two half moons, then the bottom was made, with two more half moon openings. The arrow was placed in the middle, and then they fused the two halves. I know this is how they get pennies into little glass jars with BB sized openings. However, I’d think the heat would catch the arrow on fire.
The “feathers” are wood, too… It’s all carved out of a single piece.
The wood in question was almost certainly pine. If you soak it long enough, you can press it into shape without breaking it, pass it through the holes, and then soak it again to restore its shape.
Nevermind #1…didn’t see that the thing was one piece of wood. (And for some stupid reason, I can’t edit my messages when I’m at home…can at work, but not at home!)
William Poundstone explains it in one of the Big|ger|gest Secrets books. Chronos is correct that the wood is soaked to make it compressible, threaded through the hole in the bottle, and then allowed to expand again.
There’s a particular kind of wood that has the necessary properties. Although I don’t have the book in front of me, I don’t recall it being pine that Poundstone referred to. Balsa, maybe?
It seems there was a popular trick 100 years ago when people were in not such a great rush.
You could find coins enclosed in a wooden cube with holes on the sides that let you see the coin inside but were too small to pass the coin.
The trick was to embed the coin in the side of a live tree and let it grow around the coin for a few years.
I also remember seeing a photo of some tree (in California I believe) which had “swallowed” a bicycle by growing around it. I wonder if this was real or a fake though.
As noted above, Poundstone explained this in one of his Big Secrets books.
At the last place I worked one of the guys had an arrow through a Coke bottle. Another guy liked it so much that he made his own. As Poundstone explains, part f the secret is the wood used – it’s Basswood. You can get it at hobby stores. You can compress it in a vise, oke it through the holes you’ve CAREFULLY drilled in the bottle (using a special bit for glass and ceramics), then you expose it to steam and the wood expands back to its original size.
A word of warning: The wood usually doesn’t look exactly the same after you’ve re-expanded it. Be prepared to do a little cosmetic touch-up.
I don’t know if the picture you saw was real or fake, sailor, but there’s a farm up the road from my parents’ place that has a tree with an old wagon wheel embedded in it - it most definitely can happen.
So I suppose you could make the arrow and coke bottle trick look very realistic by threading a branch through the hole and checking back in ten years to do a little whittling?
I wonder if they still make that fancy perry (pear liqueur) that has a whole pear inside the bottle. They would tie the bottles on the pear tree branches and insert the pears while they were still small.
My mother still has on her desk a wooden arrow through a post that I made for her in shop class years ago. Less impressive than through a glass bottle, I’ll admit, but the procedure was as outlined above–soak the wood and it gets surprisingly compressible.
Ok, this bit I don’t understand. It seems the wood would expand if it got wet, no?
If you’re just going to compress it again, doesn’t that squeeze the water out? Or does the water soften the cellulose making compressing easier?