Fur's Class Magic, 3582 Bethel-New Wilmington Rd., New Wilmington, Pa 16142, USA
(724) 946-2420

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STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS With Respect To P.T. Barnum Tabman's Tables started in the magic business in 1974 as Crescent Moon Magic . I made suede leather closeup pads and started corresponding with Bill Larsen about the possibility of advertising in Genii Magazine which I did. I had gotten a stack of Genii magazines from Homer Hulse when I was a kid and Genii meant magic to me. Besides making the leather pads I made a lot of one off props for myself and a few others. By this time we had moved to Charlotte Hall, Maryland where I was able to settle down and build a nice shop in the basement of my late grandmother's house. In the 1980s I visualized and then started making a closeup table with a drawer made more like a musical instrument maker or fine clock maker would make a piece. I changed my business name to The Conjuror's Woodworks and then to Tabman USA. I spent hours hand sanding and rubbing many layers of oil until I developed an oil based finish that would rival the finish on a piece of fine antique furniture. The demand for these tables was great and it was evident that many magicians appreciated fine work much like a skilled musician would appreciate a fine guitar or mandolin. I also made them without the drawer. These were all dubbed Tabman Tables by the magicians using them and I started making tables and other handmade magic for magicians such as Max Abrams, Michael Ammar, Harry Anderson, Pete Biro, Steve Bryant, Close Encounters of the Magic Kind, Al Cohen, Egyptian Hall Museum, FFFF, Richard Hatch, Whit Haydn, John Houdi, International Brotherhood of Magicians, Amazing Johnathan, Richard Kaufman, Paul Kozak, Hank Lee, Eric Lewis, David Lichtman, Hollywood Magic, Max Maven, Ray Mertz, Geno Munari, Ton Onasaka, Jim Patton, Charlie Randall, Richard Robinson, Marvin Stern, Jim Sisti, S.A.M., Joe Stevens, Jamy Ian Swiss, Tannen's, T.A. Waters, Michael Weber, Tommy Wonder, Frank Zak and many others. I owe debts of gratitude to Michael Ammar, Pete Biro, David Lichtman, Howie Schwarzman and Richard Robinson. Michael started using my tables in his performances and lectures. He took one to F.I.S.M. with him when he won the World Championship. As Michael's fame grew he used the Tabman Tables in his L & L Video Series on Easy Magic. Pete is the first to start calling them Tabman Tables. He taught me as much about magic in five years as I had learned the first 40 years on my own and to David for generously devoting years funding and maintaining MAGIC! (and letting me be a big part of it), the original magicians BBS long before Al Gore dreamed up the internet. Howie is a great friend and introduced me to the crowd at the Forks Hotel and to Close Encounters of the Magic Kind in West Webster, NY and to Richard for enlisting me to write the Magic Hollow on his fledgling Spider Network and having me make every off the wall prop he could think of to keep me going. Thank you to you all!!! Pete Biro also pulled me into the I.B.M. Convention production staff as Hotel Shows Director at the Baltimore Convention. It was at the Salt Lake City convention that then awards chief Jerry Schnepp asked me to succeed John Gaughn as the retiring presidents Wand Maker and to craft the Gold Cups Award for Closeup Magic which I did for the next nine years. In 1991 we moved from the Washington D.C. area to Lebanon, Tennessee. It seemed like the thing to do at the time and with the encouragement of friends we moved lock, stock and table to an old farm near the Cedars of Lebanon State Park to get closer to the music industry in Nashville. That year I decided to sponsor The Music City Conclave which was an event for closeup aficionados held at the Holiday Inn in Nashville. The Nashville magic community basically boycotted the event with a few notable exceptions leaving us way in the red (welcome to music city!!!) but there was a great outpouring of attendance from around the entire southeast as far away as Cincinnati by those who weren't afraid that Max Maven's starring position at MCC would bring in some dark forces. I found Max to be everything I expected him to be and his Midnight Lecture Saturday night was sensational. Anyway, it was a real thrill to host magicians like the great Max Maven and Pete Biro, Michael Close, Jim Sisti, Geno Munari, Johnny Palmer, Howie Schwarzman and Richard Hatch doing his first anywhere lecture on the Magic of Hofzinser. It was a great weekend and one I wouldn't soon forget. Also the early 1990s found me being on the road as stage manager of MAYHEM starring Paul Kozak and Amazing Johnathan doing multi-week stands at Catch A Rising Star in Reno and at Bally's Casino in Las Vegas and then working as Paul Kozak's stage manager and onstage assistant in his show WICKED in Pittsburgh. Kozak exposed me to another world of magic and entertainment when he commissioned me to build him a version of the Arm Vivisection, an illusion from Thayer from the 1930s. I traveled to Las Vegas to view the original that once belonged to Harry Anderson at Bill Smith's shop and the thing literally scared the crap out of me. So dangerous that Bill made me stand back and then took a long piece of 2 x 4 and stood back himself using the 2 x 4 to flip the switch. It was horrifying!!! It took months of wrangling before I felt that the Tabman Arm Saw was safe enough to use in a show. In 1997 I got off the road then added a metal shop and started making ENT Camera Booms and Cranes for the local Nashville movie and video industry. I invented a moving head that was inexpensive to make and simple to operate (the magic theory of the mouse trap, sometimes it really does take a magician) and I also continued to accept projects for a few magicians until 1997. With several projects still on the bench I dismantled The Conjuror's Woodworks shop in anticipation of moving it to another building (from the milking house to the big barn where there's a bathroom, heat and running water). Little did I know that it would take me six years to get the Conjuror's Woodworks shop moved and operational again but that's now the case and thanks to Jim Patton's encouragement and help the first Tabman Tables to come off the bench will be the popular and hard to obtain Erdnase type Train Tables that were last produced in a limited run of 24 when Conjurors' Woodworks was represented by Busby Magic in the mid 1980s hopefully starting a new era of making the finest magic tables and select props for time to come. Stay tooned !!!! (tm-Biro) Email me at fursclass@magicdmc.com Tabman's Tables Fur's Class Magic 3582 Bethel-New Wilmington Rd. New Wilmington, Pa 16142 More Pictures and Biography - Click Here Products and Ordering Illusions and Stage Magic Tabman Friendly Links This website and its contents, pictures, words, images are copyrighted by Flatwood Studio and Fur's Class Magic. Unauthorized use is prohibited and generally frowned upon. Thanks. Tabman