Awesome Fire

Artist Steven Richter follows up on his epic Nazi facemelt sculpture with another iconic hothead. This time, he crafted a clay skull, wrapped it with a papier mache Nicolas Cage face, then burned it off to reveal the Ghost Rider beneath his skin.

Artist Danny Shervin precisely arranges granules of gunpowder on canvas or wood, then sets it on fire to create burnt-in pointillist art. You can buy originals and prints of his work on his website.

Instructables contributor Mikeasaurus shows off his ridiculously dangerous looking creation, a skateboard which leaves a fiery trail in its wake. It drips out a small amount of fuel triggered by a foot-controlled switch, and ignites it with an electric sparker. Full build log here.

In a video that is the very embodiment of “don’t try this at home,” guitarist Davidlap performs a brief solo while it looks like his hands are ablaze. He created special gloves to protect his hands from injury, and the fire was far enough from the guitar that it didn’t get damaged.

Just because you have a fancy fire suppression system in place doesn’t mean it will work when you need it. To ensure their system is fully functional, the Fort Indiantown Gap Army Reserve switched on the extinguisher system in their helicopter maintenance facility.

BrainfooTV shows us how to make nifty little rockets using ordinary household items like aluminum foil and strike-anywhere matches. They fire as far as 60 feet, and are surprisingly stable and accurate. The tailfins aren’t required, but they do make them look cooler.

Based on the same concept as the Pyro Board, The Blazing Beats is a two-axis version of a Rubens’ Tube, a device which emits variable heights of flame based on sound waves traveling through it. The result is a gas fireplace that dances to the beat of your music.

Duel with your friends while you roast up some tasty treats with RoastyzToastyz whimsical stainless steel tools that look like swords. Each one includes a marshmallow tip, with hot dog and tart roasting tips sold separately. A lightsaber hilt is also available.

Ellusionist took the technology from its wrist-mounted flash gun and incorporated it into a marker pen. The Pyro Fire Shooter Pen looks like a Sharpie and actually writes, but press its covert button for 3 seconds, and it will ignite and shoot flash paper over 10 ft.

A lot of fuss has been made about the flamethrower that Elon Musk’s Boring Company recently sold. But there’s a big difference between that glorified blowtorch and a proper military-grade flamethrower, as DriveTanks.com demonstrates in this comparison video.

A smart, more portable alternative to weighty metal firesafes, FirePRUF’s briefcase-style bag is made of material that can withstand temperatures up to 1000ºF for up to 60 minutes, with a 1200ºF peak, protecting documents and small items from being destroyed by fire.

Primitive Technology lulled us into thinking that making fire from scratch is easy. But as Mike Boyd quickly learns, it can be a frustrating and nearly impossible task if you don’t do your research beforehand. But with the right wood – and 8 hours of practice! – it can be done.

Peter Sripol and his buddy Sam spent a couple of days building a huge barbecue lighter, complete with a red body and black switch. Inside is a weed torch modified to fit a butane bottle. Watch them set off their leftover Fourth of July fireworks with it.

32 stunt performers put on an incredible show of courage, as each of them donned a firesuit, slathered on fire gel, and were lit ablaze to set a new Guinness World Record for the most simultaneous full-body burns. Each person had to remain on fire for at least 30 seconds.

(Loud) Engineers from Japan’s Tohoku University and National Institute of Technology are developing a truly unusual firefighting device. The machine self-balances on its water stream and can snake its way into difficult to reach locations as it sprays water on flames.

Engineer Allison Murray from the Purdue University Mechanical Engineering department shows us how their team used a customized inkjet printer to lay down a thin sheet of thermite, resulting in designs which explode into shapes when ignited. Learn more here.

A gruesome replacement for the logs in your gas fireplace or fire pit. Each skull is made from heat-tolerant ceramic and lava, layered over a steel structure. They’re not cheap, but they are certainly awesome. Also available in white, or with hollow eyes, or a demon’s head,

Inspired by The Boring Company’s flamethrower, maker Peter Sripol decided to build his own version – though this one is smaller – and much more dangerous than the one Elon Musk was peddling. We love how he calls it a “Temperature Enhancement Device.”

After creating a mix of chilled acetone and water that was both slushy and flammable, The King of Random tried to make fiery snowballs using a similar technique. After a few false starts, he succeeded with gasoline-soaked snowballs. Kids, don’t try this at home.

It must have taken Ben Ahles an ungodly amount of time to glue together 42,000 matches into a sphere, yet it took only seconds for the ball to burst into flames, and about a minute to come to rest as a blackened hull. Still, his efforts were well worth the visual payoff.

Maker Gustav Evertsson paid tribute to the 2018 Winter Olympics with a neat build. He created a series of motorized blades which he loaded up with steel wool and set ablaze. The resulting persistence of vision illusion reveals a fiery version of the iconic 5-ring Olympic logo.

The PyroLance allows firefighters to spray water into a burning structure without having to break down doors, walls, or ceilings. It uses extremely high pressure to drill a hole into an adjacent space, then sprays a fine mist on the other side to reduce the temperature.

Grant “The King of Random” Thompson shows us how to build a cool looking light-up fountain that not only spins water around in an endless whirlpool, it has a bubbler that he rigged up with propane gas so the surface of the water lights on fire.