Tiki Fireplace (not monster house's) - Other Crafts

B biffachu Member Joined: Sep 20, 2004 Posts: 53	B biffachu Posted posted on Wed, Oct 26, 2005 12:51 PM Here's a labor of love that we've been doing the last few months that i wanted to share: http://www.biffinc.com/tikifireplace/tikifireplace.html I ran into an old friend named Stafford and found out he worked at a chimney / fireplace company. With his fire safe knowledge and my friend Marcus's talent, we were able to pull this off. This post shows all the steps we went thru from concept to final. The entire shape was formed with pink insulation slabs glued together with foam in a can. We then carved the basic shape. We then put chicken wire over that and put cement over the entire form. The next step we brought the almost face-less mask ( about 150 lbs ) to the fireplace and mounted it to the wall with metal brackets. We then took a product called fireplace cement to slowly build up our tiki face detail. This product is usually used just to seal cracks in your fireplace, but it works like molding clay and cures with heat. The final weight is approx. 450+ lbs. To contain the heat we created a pizza oven-like firebrick box out to the mouth opening. This also created a shelf to rest the smoke machine on and space for the low voltage lights that lit the eyes. The eyes are made from surfboard resin my friend custom molded into the eye openings. The fire ring gas actually comes thru lava rock that is hidden with 1" of black and red broken safety glass on the very top. When lit it creates a huge blue ring of fire that rises and forms a bright white flame pattern on the top . It almost looks like a giant flaming volcano cocktail, and the glass sparkles like a broken mirror ball. We wired the controls over behind my bar to adjust the eyes brightness, control the smoke machine and set its timer, and turn the fire off/on and adjust the height of the flame. When the fireplace is on its lowest, the blue flame looks like a space-view of a volcanic planet with a chaotic lightening like effect on the surface. In my opinion we made a fireplace that was a lil more traditional tiki than monster house's attempt, and it's totally fire-safe. I hope you enjoy the pix as much as we enjoyed making and staring at now. Let me know what you guys think! Biff [ Edited by: biffachu 2005-10-26 15:13 ]

Here's a labor of love that we've been doing the last few months that i wanted to share:

http://www.biffinc.com/tikifireplace/tikifireplace.html

I ran into an old friend named Stafford and found out he worked at a chimney / fireplace company. With his fire safe knowledge and my friend Marcus's talent, we were able to pull this off. This post shows all the steps we went thru from concept to final.

The entire shape was formed with pink insulation slabs glued together with foam in a can. We then carved the basic shape. We then put chicken wire over that and put cement over the entire form. The next step we brought the almost face-less mask ( about 150 lbs ) to the fireplace and mounted it to the wall with metal brackets. We then took a product called fireplace cement to slowly build up our tiki face detail. This product is usually used just to seal cracks in your fireplace, but it works like molding clay and cures with heat. The final weight is approx. 450+ lbs.

To contain the heat we created a pizza oven-like firebrick box out to the mouth opening. This also created a shelf to rest the smoke machine on and space for the low voltage lights that lit the eyes. The eyes are made from surfboard resin my friend custom molded into the eye openings.

The fire ring gas actually comes thru lava rock that is hidden with 1" of black and red broken safety glass on the very top. When lit it creates a huge blue ring of fire that rises and forms a bright white flame pattern on the top . It almost looks like a giant flaming volcano cocktail, and the glass sparkles like a broken mirror ball. We wired the controls over behind my bar to adjust the eyes brightness, control the smoke machine and set its timer, and turn the fire off/on and adjust the height of the flame. When the fireplace is on its lowest, the blue flame looks like a space-view of a volcanic planet with a chaotic lightening like effect on the surface.

In my opinion we made a fireplace that was a lil more traditional tiki than monster house's attempt, and it's totally fire-safe.

I hope you enjoy the pix as much as we enjoyed making and staring at now.
Let me know what you guys think!

Biff

[ Edited by: biffachu 2005-10-26 15:13 ]

Post #194898 by biffachu on Wed, Oct 26, 2005 12:51 PM