Pinch tearing a deck of cards and quartering

[Guest Cliff Stamp]

The deck is held in the off hand with a pinch, the grip is not wrapped around the deck. The strong hand uses a thumb and index finger pinch to do the majority of the tearing . Some shots in progress on a full deck :

http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sstamp/images/pinch_tear_1.jpg

http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sstamp/images/pinch_tear_2.jpg

http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sstamp/images/pinch_tear_3.jpg

http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sstamp/images/pinch_tear_4.jpg

I missed the first part of the full deck tear, the shots came out lousy, but the quartering has a decent start shot :

http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sstamp/images/p...inch_tear_1.jpg

http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sstamp/images/p...inch_tear_2.jpg

http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sstamp/images/p...inch_tear_3.jpg

None of the above are full action shots, some have partial tension but are mainly poses for pictures.

-Cliff

[Guest]

That's excellent stuff Cliff! I'm very impressed with the pinch approach; you must have some good thumbs there.  How did you get the tear started ?  Did you use a pinch grip with the right hand for that part or a full grasp ? I can't imagine starting with a pinch.  Can you give a detailed description on your approach, I'd like to try it. thanks.

p.s.  on some of the photos it almost looks like more of a shearing tear (both pieces of the deck in the same plane) than a up/down tear, which is exceedingly difficult

(Edited by RogerS at 10:26 am on April 18, 2001)

[Guest Cliff Stamp]

RogerS :

How did you get the tear started ?  Did you use a pinch grip with the right hand for that part or a full grasp ?

Yes, the tear was started with a pinch on both hands. The left hand held the deck in place between the tips of my fingers and the thumb pad. The amount of compression is high and you can see some evidence of this in the shots. My right hand just does a pinch between the thumb and index finger. The bottom three fingers don't do much at all.

Can you give a detailed description on your approach

With the above grip, I rotate the wrists to put a flex in the deck. I then grip as hard as I can with my left hand which puts a lot of pressure on the finger tips. I then pinch very tightly with my right and rotate it counter clockwise to start the tear. As the tear progresses I will regrip to keep the maximum amount of pressure as close to the tear as I can get it.

To make life a little easier, you can also pull out on the deck to widen the tear same as you would went doing a spine break phone book tear. I think I did this twice during this tear and I think I switched my grip in closer 4-5 times. Because it is being tore through a rotation the depth of the tear is fairly small with each effort even when you rotate your grip  90 degrees.

The deck is quartered using the same technique.

One of the next things I am going to try to do is rip the cards lengthwise using the same technique. This will be much harder than quartering them because even though I have more area to work with, the clean cut face is much stronger than the ripped face of the half deck. As well the deck is much more rigid and harder to bend.

I am also going to try some work with the decks left in the packaging as you have done. That was extremely impressive. I have done it with cheap decks with no plastic wrapper, but they are no more than thick newsprint. I can tear them with a thumb and index finger pinch with both hands. You can buy them for like Ũ.50. Little resistance but the same size and shape of a decent deck of cards so you can experiment with different things.

-Cliff