Howdy All,

So the other night I was in this half dreaming half asleep half awake weird brain state when inspiration struck, and I was after some advice on making this routine a reality, and before I do that I guess, whether or not you even think it would be any good and worth seeing.

First off I guess, the basic run down:
The spec is given the choice between lending me theirs or selecting one of my rings. I give them my keys as collateral for their ring or in the case of it being my ring, find some other excuse to give them my keys, maybe hold this while I get so and so from my pocket. The ring goes into box (Maybe, haven't decided whether to rattle box or something similar or just do it bare handed.), but alas, first stage is the ring changes to a coin, not just any coin, changes to a mid to late 1700's replica, something with rough edges like a doubloon. The patter here is around metal working in medieval society and how everything was done with force, which I demonstrate by "pressing" the jewellery into the coin. Then I go into how much more mature metal working became once we started using forges and heat to manipulate metals, everything from common metals like tin and copper and their alloys, bronze and pewter through to the rare and precious like gold and silver, we were able to cast things much finer and with much more detail and accuracy. Using pure smoke or magic smoke v2 or whatever, in a puff of steam, the ring is shown to have melted down and not reformed correctly. It looks like it's been in an extremely hot oven, or melted down with a blow torch.

I proclaim worriedly how that wasn't supposed to happen and that I'm not really a jeweller so my skillset is outside the realms of being able to repair this. I then have a brainwave, time travel. So I ask them how long we've been going, show them my watch, check it matches theirs or close enough to, go into a time machine routine back to a time before the routine began, or just as it began. At that stage I asked them if they felt the shift in time happen, and reveal that the watch has changed. I tell them things went so wrong there that Im not going to chance doing that again this time, and get them to look in their hands, where they of course, find their ring on the keyring with the keys they have been holding since the start.

So on to the questions/advice. Do you think that routine would work? I do like the flow of it, but not having all the required props to go and test it, nor the experience to know better, I worry that I may be putting too much together and would be better off creating seperate routines around the old coins, seperate for the rings and the time machine etc. So with that said and done, do you think this works as a combination?

Also, the 3 way transpo between the ring, the coin and the "damaged" ring, does anyone have a reccomendation on a good rattle box type of prop that has a nice hidden load/unload. Ive already got pro-flite which I use fairly heavily and time machine on order just cause they look kinda cool, so all I am really short on is a smoke solution and the box if I decide to go with something like that. Also open to making one (I have a lathe and milling machine in the garage) so if someone has an idea for some sort of similar prop type maybe we could work something out where I could machine it for you if you'll let me have one?