Does fog machine juice damage paint or wood?

I'm thinking about setting up a fog machine behind a tiki mask Sunday night so that fog shoots out the mouth. The mouth is big enough that I can keep the emitter far enough away from any edges to avoid heat damage, but its inevitable that a small amount of the fog will be blown back at the mask and condense here and there. Has anyone tried this?

Hey Jack!
As you can see, great minds think alike. :)
This is the back of my bar.
I removed the banana leaves so you can see where the fog machine is located on the upper right.
It is fun to have smoke come out once in a while. It can get old with your regular friends real fast.
The smoke hasn’t hurt any of my things. I can say it’s pretty safe. It will set off the fire alarm if you let it smoke past 15 seconds. (depending if it’s inside (duh))
It’s a great effect with the waterfall at night.
I would like to commission a TC artist to carve me a decent mask someday.
Show us some pics when you get it up.
Have Fun!

Hey Jack,

We've used a fog machine on our patented, copy-righted Smokin' Menehunes stage prop tiki for years, I drilled a 1.5 " hole through the mouth (don't ask) and we pipe in the fog.

(I remember once we were playing for a bunch of seniors at a birthday party at a house the founder of Oscar Meyer built in the 50's. Spike hit the fog machine and it covered the table they were eating at, and they couldn't quite locate their food. I laughed as they gagged.)

Tikijackalope

As a magician and a owner of 4 fog machines, heres a few helpful hints.

Never ever let the fluid run out while the machine is on.

The little brass nozzle inside the mouth is scorching hot.

Don't put the hose directly on the mouth, place a piece of pvc to the mouth then attach the hose to the pvc fitting.

About once a year follow the cleaning instructions and clean the nozzle. they will plug up, especially the cheap $20 party ones.

The fluid will leave an oily substance in the hose or anything it hits directly after a length of time. It becomes slippery on tile, hardwood, metal etc. I have seen many of dancers and performers slip on stage from the residue

If you pump your fog machine into a cooler filled with dry ice, the fog will lay on the floor instead of rising up into the air.
http://209.150.104.198/haunts/upier/FOGCHILLER/
theres a link if you are intersted.

buy the fog juice now while halloween is here. It is slightly cheaper and easier to find. Stock up.

Hope that helps

Erich

Thanks to Unga, Bong and Erich for the advice; I'll try the ice thing next year. This year I played with different kinds of lighting behind the eyes and on the fog.

[ Edited by: tikijackalope on 2004-11-08 02:28 ]

I read the link about chilling fog so it flows like a waterfall, and I thought, I wonder if one of those portable electric mini-fridges would work. As fate would have it, we received an anniversary gift from our parent company and lo and behold! Electric mini-fridge! It looks like I can remove the door and make a new door with holes for input and output pipes. Can't wait to experiment with it. I'll post the results soon.

Go for it tiki bot!
We converted our bedroom fridge into a kegorator by drilling holes in the top and side, and had to cut away some of the shelves in the door. Works like a charm! Just drill away, no need to replace anything if you don't want to.

TW - It's not totally clear on that website if the fog remains inside a pipe while inside the cooler, or is it just shot loosely into the cooler and there's an outlet tube that it freely flows out of? How did you do it?

Well, we have a keg full of beer with a hose going to a tap through the top, and a hose going to the CO2 on one side...that's a very good question though, I guess the fog stuff would have to come in contact with the dry ice before flowing out...so maybe a hose is out of the question. The fridge would have to be sealed tight if liquid is going to be sloshing around in there! I guess I don't know enough about the stuff.

I assume from the website that the interior PVC pipe frame is only a structure to support hardware cloth, on top of which rests the ice. I would think that if the fog were passed through the cooled PVC framework, it might be in danger of acting like a still, returning a certain amount of the stuff to its liquid state.
I did notice that, as Halloween night got cooler, my mask began to spit a bit as some of the fog condensed in the chilly air. I assume more of that would happen if the fog was already chilled before exit, so I might have machines with and without chillers next year (economical, considering fog machines got down to $5 at Target last week).
This is one of the last pics I took; the temperature had fallen a few degrees from when the ones in my earlier post were taken, and you can see the fog is now falling and is less "billowy" as some of it is condensing into tiny droplets a few feet from the mouth. The Spencer's Moai (which, btw, made a decent bongo) was very oily when this was over; it wiped right off, though. The stuff also cleaned well from the Orchids of Hawaii mask; some of it dripped behind and soaked into the palmwood...can't tell that it hurt, though.

Those open-mouthed "Big eyed tiki" masks Rattiki is selling would be great for a small version of this; one could even put twinkle lights in their eyes.

I have a little el-cheapo fog machine... the juice, when in "fog" form, seems to dissipate without damaging anything. But if the juice concentrate itself spills... ick. Oily icky mess.

Some of mine leaked in the box, and quietly (and over time, I have no idea how long) soaked thorough the box and onto the shelf and various surrounding things. It was a p.i.t.a. to clean up.

So basically this is just a warning to make sure that when you store the stuff, the bottle is capped tightly!

mig