How to Build a Fog Machine *

* (restored)

_______________

How to Build a Fog Machine
by Allen

‘This is our home-made fog machine. It uses the same regular fog juice used in store-bought fog machines. You can buy the juice from Terror by Design, Spencers, or party/theatrical supply stores (check your yellow pages). You can also make your own juice. It’s less expensive, but there may be legal issues if the general public is going to breathe your fog. According to the Halloween-L archives: “For fog juice, mix 15% to 35% glycerin to distilled water. Experiment, the less glycerin you use the cheaper and cleaner your fog will be but it will also be lighter and not last as long.” You don’t have to use distilled water with my fog machine design because there’s no heat exchanger to get clogged. You can get small amounts of glycerin at a drug store, or larger amounts from restaurant supply companies.

‘A piston air pump (bought at the local surplus store for $5) squirts the juice onto an inverted, disassembled iron (bought at a garage sale for $1). The iron is on all the time. It’s held above the juice by long bolts from the bottom of the box. The wooden box is sealed and waterproofed inside with a kind of paint called C.R.A.E. (Corrosion-Resistant Acrylic Enamel.) Any thick, waterproof paint will work. If you build something like this, be certain to keep enough space between the wood and the iron, you don’t want to start a fire! Any device like this should be thoroughly tested before being used unattended. Heat it up without juice in it to be sure it won’t burst into flames when it runs out of juice.

‘The juice is pumped into a metal tube 4 inches above the iron with several pin-holes in it to distribute the juice over the hot surface. The heat vaporizes the juice into fog. Fans (salvaged from an old computer) on both ends of the box blow the fog out the front of the machine. Unvaporized juice runs back down into the reservoir. The intake for the pump is a metal tube glued to the side of the box with water-proof epoxy. It’s bent 90 degrees at the bottom and the end is covered with a screen to keep little bits of junk out of the pump.

‘The pump is mounted on the back of the box so it will be cooled by the flow of air. The fan and pump run on 12v, and the iron plugs in of course. A 15 foot control wire allows the operator to turn the fans on and off and the squirt the juice.

‘We built this machine back when the cheapest fog machines were $300. Today, small machines can be bought for as little as $30. Unless you’ve already got all the parts in your junk box, or can get them second hand, it might not be worth it to build this machine.

‘This type of fog will not hang close to the ground unless you cool it below the ambient air temperature. To create this desired effect, you need to build a fog chiller.’

_______________

How to Build a Chiller
by Scott

‘Parts: Cooler, Two 4″ dryer ducts (short sections), silicone caulk, tools to cut plastic, screen or netting, Flexible dryer hose, two 90 degree angle ducting, one 4″ to 2″ reduction ducting.

‘I built this out of a $15.00 Coleman cooler I got at Target the whole thing cost about $25.00. I started by marking the holes on the sides of the cooler to the size of the dryer duct and cutting them out. I first drilled holes around the line I marked then knocked out the plastic and foam core then smoothed up the edges until the dryer duct fit snug. I used silicone to seal the duct inside and out, it takes about 24 hours to cure. I then fitted netting around the inside of the dryer duct on both sides to prevent ice from falling out. I then put flexible dryer hose on one end and a set of 90 degree angle ducting pieces on the other. A reducing duct piece (4″ to 2″) will attach to the angle pieces. The 2″ end sits in front of the fogger nozzle and delivers the fog to the cooler and ice, then blows cool fog out of the dryer hose end creating a low lying fog.

‘I use regular ice from the corner liquor store and fill the cooler to the top with the ice sloping from the top to the bottom of the in/out ducts. This takes about three bags. The ice needs to be high enough to cause the fog to go through and around it, but not covering up the ducts. Some people may try dry ice in the cooler, I hear this works well. Enjoy.’

_______________

How to Make Clouds Indoors

‘Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde does something pretty unusual: not only is he a great cloud photographer, he’s making those clouds artificially in the Neuehouse studio in Manhattan. How? Based on the video above, it appears to use some sort of spray vapor and a fog machine. His exact method and what is in that mist isn’t shared, but the result looks like a typical fluffy cloud on a summer day… except it’s indoors.’ — Jason Schneider

_______________

How to Build a Mini-Fog Smoker
by Cameron

‘Fog machines consume “fog juice” to create smoke. That fog juice is made from a mixture of glycol and distilled water. Neither of those is difficult to obtain, but it’s easiest just to purchase the mixture from a local big box or Halloween store — both of which should have plenty of stock this time of year. That fog juice will evaporate and create smoky gas when it is heated up to a suitable temperature—around 200 degrees Celsius, so you just need a way to get it to that temperature.

‘For his build, GreatScott! used nichrome wire, which is used in a wide variety of devices that need to heat liquids. For example, you’ll find nichrome wire in an e-cigarette heater coil. It may also be possible to use other materials, like copper wire. That just needs to be connected to a suitable power supply to heat up. GreatScott! wrapped the nichrome wire around a wick, which pulls fog juice up out of a 3D-printed container. A fan blows the fog out of the enclosure, and an Arduino measures the fog juice level with a water level sensor and controls the wire and fan. GreatScott! does note that it may be possible for the vapor to be toxic, so be sure to investigate the safety requirements for the fog juice before building this fog machine.’

_______________

Nine Magical Results

—-

*

p.s. Hey. ** Adem Berbic, Mm. I think ‘tush’ would need to have invisible quotation marks around it. Or maybe at least outside of the UK. Yes, hope but don’t count on it in my experience. The to-be-continued-if-you-fork-out-for-the-book angle could probably work. There’s also the don’t-overstay-your-welcome-onstage angle. I might be saying that because I just read that GnR played way too long at the Download Festival and half of the audience left. Eurostar-wise, be aware that we’re apparently heading into an awful heatwave here starting today and lasting at least a week possibly two. The theater that showed ‘Blood Tea and Red String’ just followed me on Instagram. Looks like a cool venture. I wondered whether I should propose ‘RT’ to them. Being moved, very nice. I’m seeing ‘Obsession’ today, but I don’t suspect that ‘moved’ will be one of its effects. ** test_probe, Hello. My pleasure. ** Dev, Does sound possibly a bit normie. Nothing wrong with that, mind you, in theory at least. Oh, sorry, I misunderstood, no doubt my problem. Then, yes, I’m happy to hear the residency is a shorty. That’s … intense. ** Charalampos, Hello from here. All the later Roy Andersson films starting in the 00s are incredible. Like I said, the Spanish publisher formatted ‘Closer’ like it was some conventional novel, and my use of equal length paragraphs, etc. is key to how the novel works, and so they killed the book. I didn’t know there is a Kate Bush Efteling special, and I’ll go find it even though I’m not the most massive Kate Bush fan. Thank you. ** Jack Skelley, Photos are probably enough. Sweet. No, I didn’t know the Myth Lab audiobook is real now. Wow. You’re so lucky they let you and whoever you want do the reading. Grove just sent me a sample of the actor reading ‘Closer’ on my audiobook, and I don’t think I even want to hear it. I spoke too soon about Chic. I thought we already had tickets, but no, and they’re 130 Euros a pop, so I’m not sure. Kill it at the Festival. xo. ** _Black_Acrylic, I heard that about Scotland, but the way I know that is that Rod Stewart canceled a concert supposedly for health reasons then flew to wherever to watch the Scotland match instead, which I guess is a big enough scandal that even I read about it. ** Bill, bakedjesus gets an ‘A’ for originality. Awesome that you enjoyed the gig. I don’t often read you speak so positively about your gigs. The name Andrea Parkins rings a bell, yes, but I’ll go check. Sounds really exciting. I hope the trip home is … how do you most enjoyably spend long flights? Films? Audio input? ** Tosh Berman, Hi. I had a phase where I was into genre fiction, but I mostly read the weirdos like Thompson, Cain, and those guys. Amy Gerstler has been singing the praises of Mickey Spillane for years, but I’ve never tried him. Normally the word ‘literary’ applied to fiction makes my skin crawl, but applied to a spy thriller is interesting. You know I’ve never read Proust, so I don’t know what that means other than that it’s an extremely positive point of comparison for the person who makes said comparison. And word ‘psychedelic’ is obviously a big lure to me. Hm… ** Barkley, Well, hello there, pal! I don’t think HB hated me per se, I never met him. But he thought/wrote that my work brings unnecessary negative energy into the world, and I guess he hated that. I’ve had people do tarot readings for me. Not a lot, but some. When I was writing the first version of my novel ‘I Wished’ and was really bent out of shape emotionally from thinking so much about George, a tarot reader friend did a reading for me to try to make contact with him for me in the beyond, but instead he got a message from the powers controlling the cards that contacting George was an extremely dangerous thing to do, and the powers refused to do it. That’s always made me think. Oh my god, I would so love to go on that dark ride. And it’s in Spain so … maybe. Thank you! There are few better routes to my heart. It’s so good to see you! ** Caesar, Oh, I think people outside of Argentina know how to pronounce César. Granted, I only really fraternise with sophisticated people. I’ll hope for a translation of her book, for sure. Oh, yes, that rings a bell about that writer contacting me, yes. It’s so cool of him to do that. Ugh that the new edition of ‘Closer’ is the same. Definitely don’t read it. It’s a disaster. Great, see you on Instagram. How’s your week panning out? ** Steve, Sobermaxxing, haha, you’ve got to love these new terms. Sad about your friend, but an excuse to go visit him in Ireland, no? What a nightmare, that gig context your friend had to work in. I’m seeing ‘Obsession’ today, so soon I’ll know. ** Laura, Well, a hater of my work, at least. Or maybe shrinking further would do him a world of good? I like dance music, I just don’t dance. I sort of bob. Like I said, the Spanish publisher just discarded my very careful and important formatting of the novel and tried to make it look as normal as possible, I guess hoping to make more money off of it. It was infuriating, but what’s done to done. Upward spiraling for you but without the spiraling part. ** HaRpEr //, No, not many penises. I want and I guess still want my work to be as androgynous as possible under the circumstances. It’s very true that small chunks is easier for those who are immediately intimidated by experimentation to feel like there’s a possibility that they could digest such a work. But you just have to stay true to the purpose even if it cuts your readership down to a sliver. Or so says I. ** laura w, I’ve been thinking about dice ever since you brought them up. I’m going to see if somewhere in Paris there’s a store aimed at dice aficionados. Probably not, but … I don’t know that Qiu Miaojin book. I’ll go see what it is. I didn’t publish my first novel until I was in my mid-30s, so young is relative to me. Yeah, the Knicks, people were even partying over here where there are no basketball teams or anything. Lucky you about the dying heatwave. A bad one is starting here today, and I can already feel the impending horror at 9:24 am. ** nat, I often wish I could write characters as good as some of those escorts. I would be way down for that guest-post obviously of it pans out. Thanks for even offering. I think I know where you are with your writing at the moment, and that can be the best part, believe it or not. Rock your everything. ** Right. I think the fact that a terrible heatwave is beginning in Paris today might be why I decided to restore this particular old post. See you tomorrow.