Burning dry cleaner bags

[delle]

Who was it who told me about this?

Because whoever it was I NEED YOU NOW!!!!


I'm preparing a dummy to burn tonight, and thought I'd give it flowing, knotted drycleanerbag hair for some snap-crackle and ooze.

I've tried looking it up (to make sure I'm not putting too many or too few knots, etc.) but this damned green machine of mine doesn't seem to want to recognize the concept.

Anyone done this before? Is there a wrong way to go about it?


(Many thanks! As always!!!!)

[delle]

Uh oh.

I just found a youtube video on it with the sparsest of instructions. These included a bucket of water.

Does the excitement come from the plastic dropping in the bucket - which it appears to in the lousy-hard-to-tell-what's-really-going-on sole video I found.


If so, does this mean I need to give my dummy Waterbucket epaulettes?????



If so, wtf is it with epaulettes today? Is it Epaulette Sunday and nobody told me?????

[Elorrum]

delle,

It's really the sound of it zooming and dropping into the zzzzzzSSSSSSSSSSS water that makes this cool.

[FIGJAM]

Drip it on a Barbie, Doc will love it!

[Elderberry]

I don't think there's any hard and fast rule on the number of knots. One every four of five inches would work. A pan of water is enough to put under it. I've never done it with more than one bag at a time. I think a dummy with a whole head of hair made of them might just turn into a giant head of flaming plastic.

Elorrum is right in that it's both a sound and light show.

[FIGJAM]

We never knotted them, just twisted them real tight.

Then you would have dred locks!

[burner von braun]

Haha, all of the original perpetrators are showing back up!

The further it is able to drip and free fall, the better, so you get those nice long mid-air zipping sounds and streaks. JK may be right, it may all want to go up,.. I suspect the tighter or more knotted, and therefore denser each individual strand, the slower it would burn and so instead drip fire. Perhaps leave a little space between strands so they don't overburn.

Of course, a giant molten head on fire wouldn't be all that bad either!

...might not want to breathe too deeply around it though..

Sounds like a great use of the concept, let us know how it goes!

[Foxfur]

I've never done it with more than one bag at a time.

I could never afford two bags at once until I had well paying jobs...

I think a dummy with a whole head of hair made of them might just turn into a giant head of flaming plastic.

I find that appealing. Perhaps suspended by the ankles, maybe 10 feet in the air. Zzzzip, zzzzip, zzip.

[EspressoDude]

best use I heard for the bags was to fill them with natural gas (not propane). nat gas lighter than air causes them to lift. A fuse may be helpful if you want to keep your eyebrows.........

extreme caution....use this thought at your own risk..

[Foxfur]

On the farm dad used hydrogen from the cutting rig. Filled balloons, tied em off and attached a stringthat had been coiled in a can of lamp oil. Payout to desired altitude and ignite.
For oxy-acetylene ground based bags, I use 1/2 teaspoon of fffg in a patch of duct tape with 30sec/ft 3/32 fuse wrapped in aluminum foil.
I guess you could use a roman candle too.

Dude! Do you know how hard it will be not to go up to Blackjack and clean up on the clearance tomorrow...

[EspressoDude]

if you do lemme know......more experiments from the batcave.

[delle]

So I ended up doing a little test during the day - with and without water - just to see what to expect. The water definitely made it MORE spectacular (and easier to clean up), but even without water it was pretty cool. It still POOFED on impact and kinda zipped on the way down. Maybe because the ground was wet it was better than if it were dry.

Fortunately I had quite a few bags for someone who hasn't had a thing drycleaned in decades. The day after Elorrum had first mentionned it (it was you, wasn't it, El?), I bumped into the drycleaning guy doing a drop off, and asked if he had some spares. Later that week there was a bundle waiting for me at the store. Since I've been surprised at the number of occasions I've had to ask "hey! you need that bag? I'll take it off your hands".


We ended up not doing hair.... Had I read Fox's "hang her by her ankles" suggestion before going, that might have been different, but it definitely felt like a waste of some great potential just to have it melt.... So she got a ratty wig instead.

We hung her from a squarestock gallows, and after she was done, just had to swing the gallows around outside the fire area, over a metal sink that may now live there forever, where the bags did their thing in real style.

Apparently it was all the rage.


I say APPARENTLY because I was not there past the setup.

But that's another story.....



Anywhooo. Next time I think just an upsidedown head with the flowing dreads might be quite exciting. And next time I'll not be a dickwad and I'll stick around to see it.

[theCryptofishist]

Doc must be right about my being a killjoy, because all I can think is: toxic fumes.



I guess I'll go listen to a playlist of La Cumparsita 20 times over by 20 different groups.