Shaft & Scroat

The one that started it all. She doesn’t look like much today, but in her prime years, she sat atop a dartboard that shot fire. A pretty smart one, that actually did different flame effects depending on what you hit.

The signage was all cut out by hand with a jigsaw; the letter was simply laser printed on to regular white paper which I glued down to .25 ply and then faux aged with used coffee grounds.

I went to New Orleans for a class taught by Dave-X and Propaniac, two Burning Man fire geeks. It’s pretty straightforward plumbing, and the key piece is a 12v solenoid valve, which in my case, was controlled via an Arduino Leonardo with an electronic Dartboard hacked up to act as an input device.

There was some logic- doubles got you two small puffs, trips got 3 small puffs, and a bullseye would empty the accumulator. Big thanks to my pal Wax who figured out all the hard bits!

Despite having phones that shot video at the time, I was always so in the moment I never got any video. But hare some stills and some WIP shots.

This is Wax. He helped me with all the complicated electronics. I am forever grateful!