Steel wool... to infinity and beyond!

I was using Steel wool to make squibs for movie special effects, and I had my equipment all thrown in a box together, which included very fine Steel wool and 9 volt batteries....long story short I had no idea that it could be ignited that way, untill I dumped all my stuff out of the box (a couple days ago)and the Steel wool "misteriously" caught on fire. I was like "what the hell is going on?!?!?" so I started thinking, picked up one of the 9 volts and inocently touched it to the Steel wool....needless to say, I could have easily burnt my house to the ground. I had no idea, I just threw everything together and put it in my closet. It scares me to think that came that close to a major disaster...so....don't EVER store your Steel wool near batteries!!!

the best grade Steel wool to use is grade 00 (the finer stuff) coarser Wire wool does not burn as well.

Here is a link to piccies of wood2's cages (mine are slightly larger)

http://wood2.woodyland.org/pics/poi/steelwool-burners/page.shtml

Anyone wanna take a rough guess at how hot this stuff burns?

I would think that if you accidently wrapped your arm with it.....it would be just sort of running a arch welder across your arm. What do you think Knagi?

Now THAT looks like fun...

Do you need fuel to make them burn, or can you just light up the Steel wool by itself?

I tend to use a staff or fire club to light the Wire wool - no extra fuel needed! Basically as soon as you have some glowing Steel wool, the person lighting runs and you start spinning like a twirler posessed!

I guess that Steel wool burns at around 1600°C but I am not entirely sure, there are piccies on wood2.woodyland.org, in the poi section, from where we were playing on top of a trig pillar in Mount Road Park. It was fairly windy as some of the piccies show which meant loads of the sparks were continiously hitting us and there was no serious dammage

We wrap it round chains, staff and the devil sticks.

Poi and sticks look best. The devil sticks look v cool, everytime they bounce you get little sparks everywhere! aaahhhh, pretty!

Mark P & Woody..
.. I saw you guys in the morning.. I'm kicking myself I didn't come over and say hello.. but I was stuck on the tea stall in one of the sound systems most of the nite.. the shower of sparks over the dunes was a great sight to see.. I had to leave all my fire stuff in the car - MILES away, coz we decided to go cross country to avoid the hassels.. but I had my blue glow stix with me..

(Looks at his wrist) Yeah I'd have to say it's worse then an arc welder. For all you ppl new to Steel wool... Don't screw up, this stuff does burn in the 1000's of degree's. A split second of skin contact is enough to give one heck of a 3rd degree burn. Or bracelet in my case.

Pic's in the gallery if anyone wants to puke.

[ 14 June 2002, 13:19: Message edited by: Knagi ]

Just saw... I could now only think what your shoes would have ended up like... tee hee... even still what a scar... chicks dig scars... or so I heard... anywho...

-------------------

Hi Fire Dragon,

It is a shame you didnt get chance to come and say hi, (which system were you with cos I was chatting to someone at one of the systems and trying _badly_ to teach someone a little bit of staff), we try and make it to a lot of parties though so I am sure we will meet again soon.

If you are at glastonbury or solstice @ stonehenge then we will see you there.

Happy Spinning

Mark P

Unfortunately I couldn't come-up with any suicidal ideas, but...

If you still have insane amounts of Steel wool you want to burn, you can pack your bike wheels with it. The spokes do a good infrastructure job; all you need to do is add some chicken wire on either side.

If you don't have any protection for your bike chain and your gears, I wouldn't recommend stuffing your rear wheel.

Another thing you might want to consider is having a really big flat open space (like a school yard) cause the sparks make it hard to see where you're going (assuming it's dark).

Actually *thinking suicidal* pack both your wheels full and find a cleared mountain (those that are used for skiing are usually best!) and down you go! But that's only if you're tired of living and want to go out with ...errr... style

/soldari

Somehow it doesn't sound quite as bad wrapping your arm in Steel wool... but I could be wrong

im going to have to try this.....

just checking ive interpreted some of the info correctly.

Steel wool can burn if its hot enoungh, resulting in lots of sparks. it doesnt have to be used with fire heads - it can be spun by itself, you just have to initiate the combustion. to initiate the burning, hold the wool above a torch, or contact it to the end of a 9 volt battery. after that the burning is self supporting.

is that right?
thanx.

Right on.

Just make sure you have some kind of a cage to keep it in and to let the flying bits of burning Steel wool out, and pull it out a bit (if it's packed it doesn't burn well -- or doesn't burn at all).

I'm not sure about the battery thing, but I know you don't need fuel to ignite it. I'm assuming you already know you should cover your body and your eyes, the burn time is about 2 minutes from what I've experienced thus far.

Appart from that, you can do a search to find everything related to burning Steel wool. You'll find tons.

Cheers and good luck!

Hi,

Five points on Steel wool:

1) hardware mesh

A suggestion - hardware mesh can be used instead of chicken wire when making the containers for your Steel wool. Hardware mesh is basically chicken wire, but has square shaped holes. It is tougher to bend than chicken wire, but you can make some really cool cubes and stuff with it.
It is about $2 per foot. I suggest buying a pair of 99 cent gloves at the local hardware store before touching either Steel wool or hardware mesh.

2)connecting the Steel wool cage to your chain

Whether you use chicken wire or hardware mesh-- it is a good idea to loop more than one 'cell' of the wire/mesh through whatever device you use to hook the Steel wool cage to your chain. The metal cage can get quite hot, and the whole thing might fly off if connected to your chain by only a single cell.

3) grades of Steel wool

Also, as was discussed, there are 8 grades of Steel wool. They are:

0000, 000, 00, 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 (0000 being finest, 4 being the most coarse)...

For kicks, I tried it with 4, and the wool did not produce any sparks - it simply turned into a molten ball. Lame. Finer Steel wool is better.

4) audience placement with Steel wool

If you are doing a butterfly or 3 beat weave, be sure you are in profile to your audience - otherwise you will shoot sparks all over them... I like to be *at least* 20 feet away from folks when doing this.

I have found that this should be used as a kind of finale. Once an audience sees you shooting sparks 20 feet in the air, regular fire poi seems kind of lame. Just my opinion.

5) finding Steel wool

Finally, in case anyone reading this is having trouble finding Steel wool (doubtful, but you never know), I have had good results using Rhodes American (http://www.homaxproducts.com/catalog/steelwool16.html).

Thanks everyone... Gotta say, this is such a great web page.
(going to see REM twice in October....so happy)
Michael

Hi,

Five points on Steel wool:

1) hardware mesh

A suggestion - hardware mesh can be used instead of chicken wire when making the containers for your Steel wool. Hardware mesh is basically chicken wire, but has square shaped holes. It is tougher to bend than chicken wire, but you can make some really cool cubes and stuff with it.
It is about $2 per foot. I suggest buying a pair of 99 cent gloves at the local hardware store before touching either Steel wool or hardware mesh.

2)connecting the Steel wool cage to your chain

Whether you use chicken wire or hardware mesh-- it is a good idea to loop more than one 'cell' of the wire/mesh through whatever device you use to hook the Steel wool cage to your chain. The metal cage can get quite hot, and the whole thing might fly off if connected to your chain by only a single cell.

3) grades of Steel wool

Also, as was discussed, there are 8 grades of Steel wool. They are:

0000, 000, 00, 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 (0000 being finest, 4 being the most coarse)...

For kicks, I tried it with 4, and the wool did not produce any sparks - it simply turned into a molten ball. Lame. Finer Steel wool is better.

4) audience placement with Steel wool

If you are doing a butterfly or 3 beat weave, be sure you are in profile to your audience - otherwise you will shoot sparks all over them... I like to be *at least* 20 feet away from folks when doing this.

I have found that this should be used as a kind of finale. Once an audience sees you shooting sparks 20 feet in the air, regular fire poi seems kind of lame. Just my opinion.

5) finding Steel wool

Finally, in case anyone reading this is having trouble finding Steel wool (doubtful, but you never know), I have had good results using Rhodes American (http://www.homaxproducts.com/catalog/steelwool16.html).

Thanks everyone... Gotta say, this is such a great web page.
(going to see REM twice in October....so happy)
Michael

Hey Woody that picture is amazing!!!
I've never tried Wire wool but will definately get some now

question: has anyone tried this with copper instead?

i know if you put fine enfough copper wire in a flame it releases ions and makes the flame go green.

any thoughts on what it would do if mixed with the Steel wool? i'm guessing it would give off a mix of orange and green sparks but i dunno. i've seen copper pot scrubbers but the are more like a ribbon than wool.

as a side note i did try burning a bit of very fine motor magnet wire, it is copper and it did go green but i'm not sure if it was a coating on the wire or what... looks like i'll have to make some cages to test it out.

i had also contemplated adding some magnesium bits for nice bright white trailers but after seeing Knagi's nice little bracelet and knowing that its burn temp it WAY hotter than the Wire wool i think i may pass...

ok not too sure about this....but it MIGHT burn green, but its usually copper chloride that burns that green color your looking for,
and for your heads
make a core of 0000 guage Steel wool and put your guage on the outside of it,get a 6v battery, attatch one wire to each pole, touch them on the 0000 guage wool and boom there you go

and will magnesium chloride do the same thing as magnesium ribbon???????????
and another point....stock up on fireworks, they have pellets of things like
strontium chloride=scarlet flame
copper chloride=blue\green flame
etc etc etc