Top 10: Flamethrowers!
A look at ten of our favorite flamethrowers covered here on Make:.
pyrotechnics
How-To: Green Lantern. Literally.
No power rings are involved, here, just boric acid, methanol, and a homemade spirit lamp. It’s all nicely explained by Instructables user The Green Gentleman.
Fire Without Matches: Twenty-Three Spontaneously-Igniting Reactions
Really wonderful community video collaboration from the chem-hackers of sciencemadness.org, including MAKE pal and guest blogger Hayden Parker. Over about fourteen minutes, we are treated to a bench-side view of two dozen energetic reactions that share an interesting property: reagents that, on mixing, spontaneously burst into flame.
El Pulpo Mecanico: A Flame-shooting Octopus Vehicle
I think you’ll all get a kick out of Duane Flatmo‘s El Pulpo Mecanico, a flame-shooting octopus vehicle from this year’s Burning Man. I have to agree with Cyriaque Lamar from io9, who likens this pyrotechnical cephalopod to a video game boss. Anyone out there who wants to ride this contraption has to line up behind me!
How-To: Blast Through Boring Farmwork With Dynamite
I think it was in one of the WWI-era “Boy Mechanic” books that I found a DIY project opening with the direction to “pick up a few sticks of dynamite at the hardware store.” I can think of a lot of projects I would like to undertake – and many more than I would like to write – that would start out in the same way, today.
Plasma Arc Loudspeaker
High voltage electrodes immersed in acetylene torch flame produce a plasma arc, and superimposing an audio signal on this high voltage turns the flame into a loudspeaker at TX/RX Labs in Houston, TX.
ARE We All Pyros? (and Practical Pyromaniac Book Giveaway)
Congrats to Bill Gurstelle for his Esquire article, “We Are All Pyromaniacs.” As you know, Bill is guest authoring on the blog, in celebration of the 4th and the release of his new book, The Practical Pyromaniac.
