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Last night at fire spinning practice at the City Museum we got to test a new flamethrower. It was good, because like in any group, tensions can ocasionally get high, misunderstandings can cause hurt feelings, and a group feels growing pains as it trys to find out how it wants to handle the dangers (quite literal dangers, in this case) of having more people around.

One of my fellow spinners was not very happy due to the tension, and the fact that his propane tank was empty. He had brought with him version 2 of a large recreational flame thrower that he wanted to test, but was out of gas.

The flamethrower design is simple. A standard propane grill style tank is filled with liquid propane. When you open the valve, this liquid propane begins to boil, and turns into a gas as it leaves the tank. This gas is mixed with air, and ignited to cook your food. However, the tank can only boil propane away at a certain rate, otherwise the tank ices up, since the vaporization of the propane sucks the heat out of the tank. If the tank ices up, you don’t get any more gas until it thaws.

In this flame thrower, the LP tank is connected via a propane regulator to a secondary holding tank. This tank holds pressurized propane gas, instead of holding liquid propane. Coming out of the tank is a 3/4” steel pipe, with a T adapter on the end. One part of the T goes to the regulator, which fills the tank. The top part of the T goes to a gas ball valve. Coming from this valve is a long piece of the same 3/4” pipe. At the top of the pipe a small propane torch is attached to provide a pilot light.

To activate the flame thrower, you close the ball valve, and open the regulator up to around 30 PSI. The LP tank slowly pressurizes the second tank, and when you reach 30 PSI (which takes a minute), then you quickly open and close the ball valve, releasing a burst of pressurized propane from the top of the pipe. As the gas passes the pilot light, it ignites in a tremendous ball of flame. As the gas burns, it forms a 20 foot tall tower of flame, and a concussive explosion.

But as I was saying, we had no propane. One of the proprietors of the museum came out to see what we were up to, and when he realized we had no propane, he went out back and grabbed a tank for us to use. This instantly perked things up (remember the tensions I mentioned?). After a few good test explosions, the proprieter came back. At first we thought he was going to ask us to stop, but instead he asked us if we would take the apparatus way up onto a stone tower out in front of the museum, and make some big cool fireballs out where everyone could see. Clearly we were his kind of freak. So we lugged the rig up into the tower, and proceeded to release mighty bursts of fire that attracted the attention of all the people living in the lofts across the street, as well as setting off a car alarm (twice).

After the excitement of the flamethrower and the satisfaction of having caused a ruckus, the evening went much better, proving that truly there is no problem that isn’t best solved with an explosive inferno of fire.

P.S. If anyone has either a whistle valve, a gas solenoid valve, or a unicycle that I can have, please contact me!

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