Properly Lighting Your Pumpkin
It started with a visit to the Extreme Pumpkins website. Of particular interest to me was Flaming Head, Puking Pumpkin, and using a roadflare. Flame is good. Road flare is better. However, it still seemed rather pedestrian to me. I could do better...
The pumpkin is packed to the top with thermite, somewhere around 10 lbs or so. A little tinfoil used to keep the mix from running out the eyes and mouth.
The pumpkin was not incinerated, due to the high water content. It turns out to be a great container for thermite, even better than ceramic since it won't crack. There was a goodly chunk of iron in the pumpkin. Most of the slag was expelled from the mouth. Strangely, there was a two foot tall green flame for a couple seconds. Not sure where that came from, as no copper compounds should have been present.
A word about safety here. Don't try this at your house - I didn't :-) Don't try this on or near anything you don't want incinerated or destroyed. Concrete or asphault included. It will set anything within 5 feet on fire, including you. Keep safety equipment nearby. So if you are on fire or otherwise wailing in agony, you did it wrong. Worse, you probably caught something else of value on fire.
Last modified: 03 Nov 03
Properly Lighting Your Pumpkin / Dale Sulak
