H
I
J
WARNING: Do not look down the pipe, like I do all the
time! Someday I’m going to catch a fireball in the face.
4. READY, FIRE, AIM!
4a. Depending on the length and width of your
barrel, you’ll want to adjust the amount of flash
cotton and flash paper used. Remember to
unplug the alligator clip from the glo-plug
before loading.
4b. Wad a pea-sized bit of flash cotton into a loose
ball, tamping it down the barrel with a pencil or
screwdriver until it barely touches the glo-plug.
4c. Fold a small square of flash paper into a missile.
Remember: The flash cotton is your accelerant,
while the flash paper forms the fireball itself. You’ll
want the paper tight enough to fly a few feet, but
loose enough to ignite before it leaves the tube.
4d. Replace the alligator clip.
4e. Yell some grammatically questionable Latin
and fire!
K
Improvement Ideas
Commercially available flash guns sometimes have
2 barrels and 2 separate triggers. If you make the
first Orpheus Six-Shooter, please send me video
(and I’ll send you a soothing hand salve in return).
My body design is simple, made from parts you
hopefully have around the house, but the professional flash guns use a metal body that holds the
battery and barrel both, making them much more
easily concealed. Pro shooters also use a press-on
clip instead of an alligator clip to attach power to the
glo-plug. Either improvement could be rigged easily
by a maker more clever than me.
The Orpheus Shooter is just begging to be integrated into a leather glove or cane, as well.
My next project for the Shooter: wiring it into a
Hobby Tron R/C Apache helicopter for remote firing. Why bang on your ceiling to quiet the upstairs
neighbors when you can fly a chopper into their
window and set them aflame?
Joel Johnson is a technology writer living in Brooklyn, N. Y.
He writes a monthly how-to column for Popular Mechanics
and spends his days blogging at gadgets.boingboing.net.
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