I can imagine a few ways of doing the catching trick – it still takes a hell of a lot of practice though. If anyone remembers that ninja episode on Mythbusters, that guy catching the arrows has incredible reflexes. Even with their bows tuned down, the arrows could be traveling at over 60 yards a second. I can’t imagine the knives traveling anywhere near that speed.

The velocity is not the trick with the flaming knife. I’ll tell you in person if you buy me a beer.

If the target wore something protective under his clothing, the risk of serious harm becomes pretty small. The risk to the arm is only from a direct hit, to slice a cucumber the edge doesn’t need to be sharp enough to cut flesh. The point only needs to be sharp enough to stick in the wood.

In the flaming knife trick, the knife that was caught was not thrown with the same velocity as the knives that went into the board.

I know someone who knows the The Danger Committee and how they work.

I know the person who is in charge of their insurance.

I have seen their act twice up close.

They are really throwing real knives. The person I know who knows them knows this. The person in charge of their insurance knows this, and I saw it with my not untrained eyes.

You absolutely can fake something like this, but you can’t fake just any version of it. To do this the “trick” way would require a different stage setup, and a lot of other differences. They are not faking any of this.

Now, truthfully, some of the stuff they do is hard, some easier, and they may adjust their patter to exploit how it looks more than what it is. But actually, they only do that to a minor extent. The grabbing of the flaming knife is, in my opinion, easier to do yet more likely to hurt than it look. I will not explain why I think that in open space.

Regarding the insurance: No, their insurance risk is nothing special. This is a Ren fest. Across the way there is a guy who spends his day 20 feet up on a unicycle towering over children and drunk people. Down the road men on horses knock each other over with jousting poles. Up near the entrance two guys sword fight with actual (not tipped, yet also not sharp, yet pointy) epees in the middle of the encircling crowd. The fire breathers …. are eating fire and setting each other on fire, etc.

(The time I’ve spent with Renfest people off site (or in the back lot) …. which was not at this Renfest, and not with these knife throwers … taught me that the most severely injured are the jousting. Of course, there was a trapeze act at that Ren fest and one of those guys did die during the act, but not while performing it at the Renfest.)

And, all across the landscape are SCA and others getting steadily drunker and drunker all day.

The Renfest is a high risk insurance nightmare from one end to the other, which is why they have a guy who is in charge of just that (and one or two other issues). A few very skilled guys throwing knives are diddly squat compared to a drunk visitor in a knight suit running onto the stage during the fire eater’s act and knocking something over. Or whatever.

Then by all means show us how it is done. Making shit like that look real is not easy, nor is the difficulty in building the props. If you think it is then please, prove me wrong and do it – or even provide some evidence to how easy it is.

Here is a hint – you don’t see many people fake that.