Firespinning

A few people I lived with over the summer were really talented firespinners (you can see photos of them in my photography portfolio) and they inspired me to make a firespinning prop! After making a standard staff, I wanted to make something custom and set on making a set of fans. Standard fans are made using bent steel rods and have discrete kevlar burning elements.

Standard fan, for reference: not my design!!!!!!

I wanted to try making a set with a long, continuous kevlar burning element. Since I had access to a waterjet, I designed them with sheet metal manufacturing in mind, which meant I had to use bearings to provide a rotating surface unfortunately, since I didn’t have easy access to a CNC mill to round over the inner edge of the spinning grip.

This constrain ended up being absolutely fatal though, as the bearing was both too small to comfortably hold and was crushed during insertion into the tapered hole created by the waterjet. Looking back at the bearing specs, these holes absolutely needed to be bored out to within a few thou.

Even though they ended up not working, I had a really fun time designing and making them, and learned a few basic tricks in spite of their dysfunctionality.

I feel like it’s important to document failures as well as successes in order to learn from them.