Fire Sculpture - writing

Hey!
Ive been making fire sculptures of names, letters and phrases for about a year now and doing it my own way...I cant find anything on how to make 'real' ones, can anybody help?

I usually make a wooden/aluminum frame, wrap the whole thing up in hessain bags & tie wire, pour kero over the lot....let it soak for a few days before the big show...

Then I find a piece of guttering and put it below the sculpture on the night. I seal the ends off and have them sticking some 3m out from the sculpture...

I pour some kero, a little coleman fuel and a lot of shellite into the guttering till its about 5cm deep. I then add some chemicals to the mix (usually boric acid for green/blue flame) or just leave them out.

Then I have two twirlers on either end twirling. Usually we do it at least 50/100m away from audience, so they cant see the sculpture.

I get the twirlers doing a basic hand over hand with a single staff...on a cue from the bongos they lower themselves to one knee, keeping up a really fast spin...eventually the shellite catches and a flame jumps up...lighting the whole piece of guttering. Ive had flames go up to 3-4metres doing this.
Of course this creates a 'wall of flame' effect and the twirlers usually get a little singed, but twirling the staff on an angle usually prevents this if they can jump away quick enough.

When the wall of flame dies down (after a few intense seconds) you are left with nothing but the writing in flames and the twirlers twirling around it.
stunning.

any other ideas?

thanks,
lluhmas.

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Fire is Love

I'm sure I used to have some info on this somewhere.

Bear with me and i'll see if I can dig it out.

Gruff

I thought about fire sculptures a while back but gave up due to lack of time...

It might be cool to light with a button (like the "self lighting staff discussion")

Sounds pretty cool, I think your sculptures sound just as real as what anyone else can make.

On the safety side, it might be better to have a piece of guttering or track running behind or to the side of the sculpture so that the firies are in no danger whatsoever. If it was behind or out to the front, there would be no visual difference to those watching, and it would definitely be nicer to the guys doing the lighting.

There's no reason for people to get even slightly burnt if it can be avoided. (I hate burns!!)

Do you have any pics of completed sculptures or writing? It would be nice to see them too..

Cheers.

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Charles (AKA INFERNO)

newdolbel@hotmail.com
http://juggle.co.nz/fire/fire.html

What can I say.. wow! pictures would be awesome.
It's funky art like that which help swell the ranks of twirlers!!

One suggestion of something that would look fully sick would be a twirler propped up on an old surfboard in front of a fire sculpture shaped like a standing wave - to have fire and smoke where there's supposed to be seawater and froth!

Note: what wouldn't be too cool to see would be a wetsuit melting to a twirler.. =(

bender, that would be awesome!
Dont like the idea of a new birthday suit of neoprene though.
I heard somewhere about someone trying to make a fire cyclone/ willy willy/ vortex kinda thing....anyone got ideas on how we could do it?
I'm keen for it to be my next project.

Oh and I ordered an electroglo staff today HURRAH!!!

twirl on,
lluhmas

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Fire is Love