The work shop of Tim Wisseman

I work out of a small work shopin my hometown of North Fork California high in the Sierra Nevada mountains at 3000 feet. I have been building props professionally since 2006. I started out building props for Hocus Pocus magic in Fresno and later on built primarily for the now infamous Outlaw Magic Effects after Outlaw Magic folded I started selling through Gemini Artifacts. I have had a wonderful experience working with a Vic over at Gemini. I've been working hard to keep Gemini in stock, but there's been an overwhelming demand for my props they tend to sell out as soon as they get into the Gemini store, which isn't necessarily a bad thing for me, but cannot often lead to frustration for collectors who wish to acquire my props

I went to college at UC Santa Cruz went there for a few years before deciding to give up pursuing a computer engineering degree and decide to come home and become a logger, working in the Sierra National Forest for 10 years. I then I decided to become a computer programmer and I wrote a very successful play by email video game called VGA planets for the old BBS systems and I did that all the way up until around 2006 when I started building magic props pretty much full-time. From 2001 to 2007 I am worked at a science museum in Fresno called the Discovery Center. I ran summer camps, did magic shows that were a combination of science and magic. While working at the science museum I found that kids really enjoyed strange spooky magic bazaar magic. I actually did several bizarre magic shows at the Discovery Center during several of the summer camps that included very spooky bizarre magic and weird storys I found that the kids loved it. That's how I got back into the Bazaar in the weird which I really enjoy, something that I had not touched since the 80’s, back when some weird guy named Tony would send me “New Invocation” news letters in mail once in a while.

One of the one of my favorite tricks I used to do was catching a ghost. What I would do is take two see through glass bottles and put a few drops of hydrochloric acid in one of the bottles and the other bottle I put a few drops of ammonia hydroxide. I would tell the kids this was a ghost catcher to catch a ghost for she needed bait, so I would take out a nickel and polish it up nice and shiny. I would drop the nickel in one of the bottles. Then I would place the other bottle over top the bottle with a nickel. sooner Smokey fog would appear inside the bottle indicating the presence of a ghost manifesting itself. I would then grab some masking tape and quickly tape the battles together to prevent the ghost from escaping. Now the kids always wanted to be kind to the ghost so we would always take the trapped ghost outside and find a safe place to let it go.