The Ring of Fire: a Cheap Steel Wool Pyrotechnic Display

Intro: The Ring of Fire: a Cheap Steel Wool Pyrotechnic Display

Have you ever wanted to create showers of sparks flying in all directions? Have you ever wanted to create an amazing pyrotechnic display, but were unable to due to the high price of fireworks? Well now you can! In this instructable, I will show you how to build an apparatus that when swung in a circle, will produce huge showers of fire. The best part is, you can build this for under 5 dollars! It can also be utilized to create amazing long exposure photography. The video below will show you some amazing demonstrations of the Ring Of Fire in action.

Lets Get Started

STEP 1: Materials

This project only requires a few very cheap materials.

It only requires:

1. 0000 Grade Steel Wool(Can be found for about 4 dollars at any local hardware store)
2. A Metal Coat Hanger (You can find it in your closet)
3. Rope

This is all you need, only 3 materials. With these three materials, you can make an incredible light show. If you want to take pictures of your Ring of Fire though, then you will need:

1. A DSLR Camera
2. A tripod

STEP 2: Tools

This project only requires three tools:

1. Needle-nose Pliers
2. Wire Cutters
3. Lighter of 9 Volt Battery

STEP 3: How It Works

The ring of fire is basically a cage filled with steel wool attached to a rope. When you light it, it starts a chemical reaction. This chemical reaction is one that you will most likely see everyday: Rust, the formation of iron oxide from iron and oxygen. Now, you may not picture rust as a violent exothermic reaction that showers sparks everywhere, but that is because the rust you see in daily life is on items with a low surface area. Steel wool, on the other hand, has a very high surface area. It is made with many tiny fibers that creates a very large surface that is exposed to air. When you initially light the steel wool on fire, it will just smolder, this is because there is not much oxygen getting to the steel wool. After you start swinging it in circles though, air flows which accelerates the reaction, like when you blow into a fire and it gets hotter. While it is swinging around, the centripetal force of the rotation causes small burning pieces of steel wool to fly in all directions. These are the sparks you see. This whole process is just extreme rusting.

STEP 4: Adding a Loop to Your Coat Hanger

For this step, you will need to take your pliers, and bend a loop on top of the coat hanger. This is where your rope will attach to. Make sure to add a small lip to the end of your loop so it will not slip off.

STEP 5: Separate the Two Parts of the Coat Hanger

To do this, use a pair of wire cutters to cut the bottom of the coat hanger in half. Then, twist out one of the wires of the coat hanger. You can then straighten the wire. You should be left with a straight wire with a loop on one end.

STEP 6: Making the Cage

This part will be used to hold the steel wool. It will allow the steel wool to be held in place, yet release sparks nad have a good airflow. To make the cage, use pliers to start making a spiral starting at the opposite end of the loop. Make the spiral go outward, then back inward. This step is a little tricky, but when it is done, you should have a fairly solid looking spiral with a loop on one end.

STEP 7: Tying the Rope

After the cage is done, you will need to tie it to a rope. To do this, take the rope, and tie a double half hitch. This is the specific knot that I used, but it can be replaced by many other knots. All it needs to do is hold the cage to the rope.

STEP 8: Loading the Steel Wool

To load the steel wool, take a chunk, and pull it apart to so that way it takes up a bigger volume. This will allow more airflow and therefore more sparks. You can then insert it into the cage until it held securely in place by the wire. You will now be ready to test it!

STEP 9: Testing!!

To test the Ring of Fire, light it on fire with either a 9 volt battery or a lighter. Then, swing it around on a rope. Now, before you test it, you need to choose a proper location. This device creates a stream of sparks, which can catch anything on fire. You will need to choose someplace where the sparks will not catch anything on fire. I chose the beach because there is no flammable material. There are many other places that will work for this experiment too, just make sure there will be no fire hazard. So, have fun!

STEP 10: Taking Pictures

To take pictures of your awesome light show, just set your SLR camera on a tripod. Then set it to manual exposure, set shutter speed to 3.2 seconds, the ISO to 200, and the Fstop to 7. You will then need to set the camera to a 2 second timer to prevent shaking in the camera. You will then need to focus the camera on the subject. To do this, have the person who will be spinning the steel wool hold a flashlight. Then, use the manual focus to focus on that light, with that, you should be able to take your picture. Be creative with this. These pictures will turn out amazing!

STEP 11: Cool Photos

Here are some awesome pictures of the Ring of Fire in action. There is not much to be said, these pictures are just spectacular.

STEP 12: Be Creative!

You can use this Ring of Fire to take awesome pictures. I find it cool looking to spin the steel wool while walking forward. It makes it look like a spring. I also find it cool to stand in the sparks. Now, this does hurt a bit, but it is worth the cool picture! I also took some pictures sitting behind a boogie board in the sparks. It seems like there is a rain of fire that I am trying to hide from. You can be creative as you want with these pictures. They are fun to take.

Good luck with building your Ring of Fire and taking pictures!

Disclaimer: This project deals with fire and can be dangerous without the proper safety precautions. Exercise common sense when using.

Comments

[Youtube knight16]

Nice!

[tmaccarone39]

Let's put this to rest. Centrifugal forces are not real. You cannot explain the laws of nature by gut feelings. Both centrifugal and centripetal forces (real or not) could not exist at the same time. Applying Newton's third law of equal and opposite reactions would result in a cancellation of the forces and no motion would exist in this application. The so-called centrifugal force is a misrepresentation of physics by engineers and industrial technicians who don't have an appropriate background. A vector analysis of the change in velocity (not speed) for an object moving in a circle yields an acceleration that points toward the center of the circle. Therefore the force points in the same direction.

[edhatch0310]

Critisium

[Gorilla22]

Whoa man, calm down. All you do is spin it around, and the sparks fly out. Just appreciate how cool this is, and if you want to criticize, keep it to yourself. I don't care how many laws of physics this thing breaks. Somehow it works, and that's good enough for me.

[sheripres]

I'm with you, Gorilla22! Well said. It is a fun project and I will have to do this! Super cool!

[rmckillip2]

d'Alembert discussed in his treatise on Dynamics that one may treat dynamics problems as statics problems, if you use the inertial reaction as a "fictitious force", which in this case is centrifugal "force". F = ma becomes F - ma = 0, where -ma is the fictitious force. As HuyV7 said, these are convenient when writing force diagrams in an accelerated reference frame. But, as tmaccarone39 points out, you can't include these fictitious forces along with the inertial reactions.

[HuyV7]

While the centrifugal force is not a real force it is a force that exists in the moving reference frame and thus can be used to describe and design a system dealing with the effects of that "force". e.g. a car.

[Speg]

Buy a wisk at the dollar store. Works the same. My friend and I did it and we found a relly cool spot.

Photo property of Chad Lander Photography.

[MaryB411]

What are the sparks landing on? Looks like rocks below. Great effect!

[Speg]

You are correct. It was a great find for the shot.

[DavidR165]

I did this a couple of years ago and it worked brilliantly. Then I tried it again a couple of weeks ago and it failed miserably... :-( and I don't know why. I'm sure I used even finer wire wool this time, so it should have worked better, not worse? Any ideas from the worldwide audience?

[sharpstick]

Awesome effect. I strongly suggest that all spectators be on one side, directly in front of you. And tilt the plane of rotation like in your picture, pointed at the ground between you and the audience. One time a clueless friend of mine did this, swing it horizontally overhead. The whole crowd was running for our lives from the shower of sparks. Just sayin.

[distar97]

I did this many times. The safest place is where the persongiving the show is assuming it's done on an angle as seen in the first picture.
Having said that, it's up to you to ensure viewers are not behind you or on either side.

The instant sparks start flying you need to watch that nobody wanders into the hot zones. I say this because the urban park where I did this was relatively small.

It is relatively safe, no one ever got burned.

[blkadder]

When I was a kid, you could not purchase fireworks in Massachusetts, so we always made due with steel wool and a coat hanger. I would imagine people would have a stroke if they saw kids doing this without massive amounts of overprotective clothing, but back in the day we did this quite a bit without any undue injuries. Thanks for posting this up.

[autotech1]

I've been showing people how to do this since I first learned how to do it over 40 years ago. It never ceases to amaze people what a simple piece of steel wool can do for "fireworks" on Independence Day or for their New Year celebration.

[danny59]

Good job buddy. I've been a round for 58 years and I've never seen this, very cool.

[LeslieGeee]

Tanner_tech no matter what the science (even though interesting ) this is really cool. Thank you for sharing:)

[niuchenhui]

it's so cool

[ronjohnstone]

One correction: it should be centrifugal force, not centripetal force as swinging it sends the sparks away from the center, not toward it.

I'd also add a pair of goggles to the list of necessary items as any breeze may send those red hot pieces of metal into your eyes. A bucket of water would be good too.

[liptackj]

Sorry Ron , but there in no such thing as centrifugal force. Newton's first Law of Motion says that the entire burning mass of steel wool would fly off in a path tangent to the circle if it were not for the centripetal (center seeking) force of the rope. Once small pieces of burning steel wool become separated from the rest, they follow the law (as they must) and fly off tangent to the path. You can clearly see the tangent paths in the photos.