Vintage theatrical haze with chemicals.

For flame effects it's usually propane, but there are flame projectors that use butane to spray alcohols with chemical colourants.

Big Clive

Also, I'm assuming in the industry some kind of gas is used for flame effects generally?

Your remarks on people ruining Glycol machines by putting oil in them gave me a stupid idea: The heating assembly in a fog machine looks almost entirely like the vaporiser assembly in a paraffin weed burner, just electrically heated instead of being self sustaining (once primed) and with a less constricted jet. I'm thinking with a sacrificial fog machine and a blowtorch or something near the outlet as a pilot you could shoot out massive dirty paraffin flames on demand. It would definitely be an outdoor effect.

Great video.

Michael Brenkley

the DF-50 definitely is the standard for hazing shows. For low level for on the cheap, I take some metal flexible clothes dryer ducting, put it on the bottom of a cooler full of ice, put a decent sized smoke machine at one end and let the other end of the duct hang over the side of the cooler. Amazing effect. At one show I did this with a bunch of votive candles sitting on ceramic tiles around the carpeted stage. The tiles were used because the venue didn't want candles directly on the carpet. It was a bonus - the ground fog seemed to completely avoid the tiles, so the candles appeared to be floating in mid air. super cheap but looked amazingly professional, and I've used the professional refrigerant chillers before.

Sean M

Oddly enough the owner of ours doesn't let us near it with a screwdriver, but the fog tank and fogger mechanism seems to be at the rear and the front is a massive water tank. The vent fans are a pair in the middle. When running as a hazer it only uses water, so we think it's generating water mist in the centre chamber and the fans then drive this out, with the fogger also injecting into the same space.

Charleso

I've not examined one closely, but I believe they are blowing a stream of glycol fog through atomised water mist to create droplets of glycol and water that are heavier than just the glycol on its own. During atomisation of the glycol fog all the water is normally driven out.

Big Clive

Definitely one of those things that's good value but not cheap! Luckily one of the kit geeks bought one using our group as the excuse... It fills a 200 seat theatre stage in about 10 seconds, your workshop would vanish into cloud before you could sip the dark and stormy. It was fun figuring out how they were doing the effect, definitely interested in seeing if you can recreate it

Charleso

But it's got me thinking about glycol fog injection to a standard ultrasonic humidifier for a scaled down effect.

Big Clive

Those are just a bit too expensive to buy for home use at this point in time.

Big Clive

It's a metric tonne equalling 1000kg of shit.

Big Clive

It's a very useful reference machine.

Big Clive

"Drunken Master"!

Nani Isobel

After a night on the wine and Sal ammoniac, Clive was completely fogged. :)

Phil Collins

I'm in the USA, and I have a bit of trouble converting in my head from metric units. What's a shit-tonne in Imperial weight?

Mike Bird

I think the current title is good. You can definitely tell that beverages have been consumed!

Richard Robinson

Clive's "personal" fog machine - runs on ethanol ;-)

Gordo

I remember my band performing a new years eve gig and I got a hold of the fog machine controls...it was quite dramatic in a Spinal Tap kind of way,

Michael Thompson

Diffraction is the word you left at the bottom of the bottle ;-)

The Tinkering Shed

I’ve seen that burnt out smoke machine somewhere before!

We have one of Arcus foggers in our local theatre group, you really should play with one Clive. It's an astonishing machine capable of doing fine haze or truly prodigious amounts of low level fog that I've only ever seen from expensive chiller systems before. It is big, but it has an adapter for 4 inch ducting so we have it out of the way feeding fog into split duct both sides of the staging.

Charleso

Sublimation is where a solid goes straight to the gas phase without passing through the liquid phase. Solid Carbon Dioxide does this, hence why it's known as dry ice. As that's another way of forming fog and the visual effect is near identical it's easy to see why the same term is used for ammonium chloride.

Charleso

I think for “drunken history” you’d need to show actual alcohol; “vintage theatrical haze” seems good to me as a title. Very interesting video (and drunkness not obvious!) Ewen

Ewen McNeill

Decomposes, not sublimates. It breaks into multiple parts, or de-composes. Like Clive after a bottle of wine :)

Moz in Oz

Very interesting, nonetheless.

NightshadeLenar