I figured since we have a bunch of lunatics here someone might be able to help me.

here's the deal... I need to make smoke.

Simple, right? Not so much. If possible, I would really like to make it with two, non-toxic chemicals or products I can just mix together in an open, metal box that's about 6x2x2 inches in diameter.

I'd like to avoid using an open flame if at all possible.

Thanks for any help you guys can give me!

 

cigarette and a lighter?

 

fog machine. rentable from costume shops, or available at hardware stores.

 

Two non-toxic chemicals that you can mix together without an open flame... dry ice and water?

 

You're describing a fog machine basically. Go rent one.

 

Either get a fog machine, or go get some dry ice.

I was going to make a joke about using some household products, but I didn't wanna see a news report tomorrow about someone managing to kill an entire party by mixing cleaning products.

 

A fog machine, or a brick of dry ice dropped into a bucket of water.

 

Since it hasn't already been suggested four times, you should go get a fog machine.

 

lol, well, here's the problem... a fog machine (5 of them no doubt) would be PERFECT as would dry ice, but they aren't exactly mobile.

-sigh- might as well come clean...

this is for my halloween costume... if you guys don't know, for the past two years, I've worn my Ghostbusters costume for Halloween.

This idea is for the trap. I want to really make it stand out. Now, the costume weighs about 40 pounds, so lugging around a cooler full of dry ice and bottle water is something I'd REALLY like to avoid.

 

Go to a music store and rent a fog machine

Or throw in some Cypress Hill motherfucka

 

I would suggest making your own setup using the fog machine fluid, which you can actually make yourself.

You have to heat the stuff up, so you could build a simple heater coil that would run off batteries in the trap, have the coils heat up the fluid and presto. The downside to this is that it would not be immediate.

To do that, you would have to have a more complicated system where one switch would have your coils heated and ready and another switch would apply the fluid to the coils. The effect should be immediate, but you risk buring/melting something in the process.

 

Is it cheaper to rent a machine or just toss some dry ice in a bowl? lol, we did this at parties when i was a kid and dry ice in a bowl was good enough to cover the floors as long as you had some air flow.

 

incences? you have to light them with a lighter first, but if you stuck a bunch in with enough air holes, you might get the effect you're looking for. If you're trap is made of plastic, line the inside with some aluminum foil first.

you'll smell nice too  

 

heh, yeah, at this point I might just fill the whole thing up with insense and light it.... gotta admit though, i was looking for something a bit more high tech. lol

 

yeah, something you could push a button, and have smoke burl out, would be awesome, but its so small and mobile, I really can't see anything else working

 

You might look up something like these:
http://www.hobbylinc.com/htm/ari/ari29311.htm

http://www.caboosehobbies.com/catal...=50&roadnames_name=&scales_name=&sku=&x=1&y=1

They're designed to make smoke puffs for small scale steam locomotives and such. I don't know if they'll necessarily make a LOT of steam/smoke, but it's something...

 

Dry ice and hot water.

 

Isn't Halloween 10 months away?

I still say the easiest, while maybe not that portable, would be a fog machine. Check and see how much one would cost and maybe buy one and modify it to be portable.

 

I'd look for a the smallest fog machine they have available, it would probably be portable enough to work. Other than that, the best I could suggest would be rigging the trap with a panel that holds back a small amount of water. Fill the rest of the trap with dry ice and you can push a button to release the trap door right before you throw the trap. With any luck it'll be smoking up pretty good by the time it settles down.

 

Your standard 20 to 30 dollar halloween fog machine is roughly the same size as the prop , which means with a little know-how, you should be able to gut one and rebuild it into said prop. I believe most are 120v, so you could build in a 120v computer battery back-up with it, but it's not gonna give you much time at all what with heat-up time and then release. You'd be looking at probably one good money-shot and that'd be it.

You could try a series of those model train smoke units, but I have no idea how well those work.

OR, you could do this:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/358963/home_made_smoke_bombs/

and use an electrical charge with a battery to set off with the press of a button to light the fuse, there-fore igniting the substance. You better build that damn box out of metal though, I'll tell ya that much.