Snail at Oakland Art Murmur
Zolie and her Cousin Stellan shooting fire from the Golden Mean Snail car.
Great story at the East Bay Monthly
KSW rollout November 12th 2011
Kinetic Steam Works
Presents
Featuring
The Serpent Twins
This is a great event to bring your kids to. Learn the basics of steam engines, see some great Machine art, eat food, drink beer and watch the kids imagine what they are going to do when they grow up.
Serpent Twins full swing shift
The build of the Serpent Twins is in full production now. Nice to see the shop so busy and the pile of unfinished work giving way to the finished one. This is going to be a really cool project and I’m excited about performing with our new 50 ft long 24 volt puppets!
Support our project here
Picture updates of the build
We are done framing the wing and now the start of the lower Jaw. After the framing is done all this will get filled in with sheet metal.
Discovery channel Canada came by for a day shoot to see what we are up to this year.
Lauren soldering 1000’s of LEDs for the body of the white Serpent
Tansy painting the wheels black.
I’ve been working on fins with the help of Because We Can‘s custom made plasma cutting jigs.
Railroad Revival Tour… Oakland
The Railroad Revival Tour with Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, Mumford & Sons, and Old Crow Medicine Show, started its first journey last Thursday with a concert in our corner of West Oakland. The Golden Mean and the crew got a chance to perform and see the show and what a hoot it was!
Great to meet some of the band members and play with the kids. We all throughly enjoyed a relaxing show with a great promotion company, music crew and audience. Great day!
Wish we could have seen more of this band. Their music has been the sound track to the Snail car and the Front Porch for the last 2 years! Next time this tour happens they need to hook up a few flat beds to the train for us to take our toys on!
Happy Birthday Lydia! Wish I was still 22!
Zolie Kyrsten & I on the Golden Mean enjoying a beautiful sunset over San Francisco bay from the lower bottoms of West Oakland
Post March Madness
This was a fun party with plenty of toys and boys.
Ummm
Christopher lighting the fire
Lost 2 eyebrows, the hair on my right leg and a good part of my sideburns sitting here…thx John!
The West Oakland Tesla Drill team performing “Crossed Swords”
Beyond Wonderland 2011
Beyond Wonderland 2011
Great to be back for our 3rd show with Insomniac! Lots of familiar faces and a warm welcome for the snail and crew! This year we brought our new remote fired flame ball and let the crowd light up the night sky to warm the rest of us. I always enjoy seeing people smile when they realize they just made that huge fireball. Meet up with some great DJ’s and even got to hang out with Paris Hilton!
John in his steampunk finest letting the girls shoot fire balls.
Each one of these fire balls shoots a different shape. Disk, ball and a ring.
The die hard fans waited in line to get a turn at shooting the fire from the snail. Lots of smiles.
Vortex Fire Ball Generators
I call them poofers. These wonderful fire toys were the next generation of vortex generators I made for SRL. After making supersonic vortex rings with oxy-acetylene explosions I want to take it one step further and make giant fire rings. I experimented with different shaped nozzles, pilot lights and valve sizes and came up with ball, ring and disk shaped flames. I was able to achieve great fire rings that fully separated from the cannon and traveled 30-40 feet into the air. The low sounding thump of these poofers can be heard for blocks attracting moths of all kinds. I also worked out a remote crane controller to trigger the poofers. I’m able to walk around the perimeter visiting with the crowd and letting them get a chance to shoot a giant fire ball. I’ve had kids approach the fire balls crying with fright, but wanting to shoot one themselves. The look on their face of achievement and delight with crocodile tears still fresh on their face is worth all the time experimenting.
You can see the perfect fuel air mix achieved (blue) at the flame front and tail of this fire ring. Note the vortex starting to form at the top. the unspent fuel still in the center of this ball will form the ring that will continue anouther 30-40 feet higher before the fuel is spent.
Here is the fire ring.
This poofer shoots and throws a very tight fireball 50 feet in the air.
Here are the poofers. I can rotate the tops on the balls below. This alows me to adjust for wind and crowds.
