The story all starts in 2006 with a suggestion from my then girlfriend, now wife that I should make fire props. Lacking complete direction in my life and not one to let a bad idea go to waste, I said why not. Playing with fire sounds like a great career. After all, I already had a logo of the V8 skull engine that I created for my nonexistent hot rod company that had flames on. So I fired up the machines, put better judgment aside, and the rest is history.
Fast-forward, a few weeks, months, years… Actually, it’s all bit fuzzy at this point, but as you can see we ended up with an entire wall of spinny things that you can light on fire. While most performers would prefer a term a little more professional than spinny things, it gets the point across. We had this great idea that we were going to focus on making fire combat props such as swords and axes, apparently the universe decided for us that hula hoops would be an unintended focus.
As the wide world of fire performance grew so big that some people actually knew what it was, we had to take the show in the road. We vended across the country but focused for the most part on California. We met many great people and had an opportunity to work with our customers. However, at the end of the day we still refused to be paid in crystals.
As time went on, we began purchasing massive amounts of Kevlar wick, and learned what it was like to compete with the military in the supply chain. At the end of the day our suppliers decided what we were doing was much cooler and made sure our shelves stayed full. In 2020 after being well-established, and accepting that we could no longer prosper beyond medium pimp, we sold the business to our employees to shift our focus to Intelligent Harvest Systems.
Back in 2006 when American Idol was ruling the airwaves and Blu-ray disc were being introduced, we wanted to be like the cool kids so we started our own clothing line. After all, I ran my own screen-printing business for a year. Everything was going great, until Urban Outfitters purchased all the surplus army jackets and forced us to have to come up with good ideas on our own. Sadly, I never became a fashion guru and had to keep my focus on what I did best, lighting things on fire.
Honestly, I don’t have anything important to say here… This is the back of the jacket. It has our logo on it.
So, on to some actual props that I made. This, as a fire fan. While initially popular as a bellydancing prop, fire fans quickly evolved to offer many different shapes and styles. I made them in chrome and black powder coat. This large ring grip became popular from Russian fire spinners. Those damn Russians are always influencing everything.
It quickly became apparent that I wasn’t the only one who like to play with fire. Maybe we just weren’t loved enough as children, but no one ever created good art without a little bit of trauma. Plus, I took this photo so I figured I would shamelessly promote myself.
As time moved on, and our customers got more demanding, everyone wanted a prop that can do everything. So, in an attempt to fulfill unrealistic expectations, I introduced the first modular LED and fire fans. You could change out the spines to use either fire or LED light sticks to make pretty patterns. And, if you want to be cooler than everyone else you could put LEDs in one and light the other one on fire.
In this photo you can see my dark Angel wing fans. These fans while unique, were too big for any normal person to spin. However, who cares, when you can use them to be a firebreathing dragon as Jen drilling demonstrates here.
Further, down the evolutionary path I created the Diablo fire fans. Simple in concept yet more challenging to fabricate, it was time to brush up on my welding skills as these were made out of TIG welded aluminum tubing. I quickly found out that the average person responding to my craigslist job posting was not winning any welding competitions. Having other task as a business owner, these ended up being limited production.
In case you haven’t figured out what these look like on fire yet, we hired Masumi Max for a photo shoot just to clarify.
Back to that whole hula hoop thing I mentioned before. On top of getting to learn about the intricacies of various types of plastic tubing, I learned about the psychology of the Hooper too. In navigating the gauntlet of hoops that were too big, too small, too heavy or too light, we found out that there really isn’t a Goldilocks zone. The final solution was to let them have it their way and made a clamp on fire spine that attaches to their hoop of choice or other objects of bad ideas.
Maybe I never intended on making a career out of hula hoops, but it was a good excuse for me to buy new TIG welder. That stainless ain’t gunna weld itself.
Hoops, yeah I wasn’t lying. We made a lot of those.
When there is smoke there is… You get the idea. Everything looks better on fire.
This is one of my earlier versions of hoop spines. Over the years I manage to become an unintentional specialist in silicone and urethane molding.
For some weird reason, everyone always seems more interested in pictures of people using my stuff than viewing my attempts to make pretty product images.
It turns out, photography is a thing. Not being one to let healthy egos go unrecognized, the Trick Concepts photo contest was born. For many years we curated some of the top photographers and performers who could not turn down the opportunity to win free stuff.
Who says a prop has to be the thing on fire? Kimi and others always provided inspiration for the next idea.
After several years of making custom fire parasols for various troops, it turned out that there were enough crazies out there that I had to start producing these. Just using an existing umbrella with some wick on it made for a fancy show, it didn’t offer much in the area of durability. While some people had created welded together rigid parasols, this concept was not exactly ideal for transport. I designed a ground-up fire parasol that was very durable and rigid enough to spin aggressively. This is one of my most complicated props I ever created and required quite a few fixtures to make all the mechanisms function smoothly.
This was always a very popular prop on those cold nights it required skimpy costumes.
Because, fire jump ropes matter.
Creepy girl rig, just when you thought all the good ideas were taken. These are the things nightmares are made from. However. they are the type of nightmares that you don’t mind having.
Back to that whole weapons thing we talked about. It turns out there was actually a pretty good market for those too. My machine shop stayed pretty busy catering to the pyros.
Making the prop was just the start, I spent a lot of time photographing product. I can still remember Photoshop version 1.0. OK, I need a life.
This one time that Fire knife of Samoa came to us…
Okay, so apparently the Grand Master fire knife maker in Hawaii quit making fire knives. We had a knock on our door to see if we could make them. “What is this you say, a flaming machete blade on a handle? Say no more, I just built a CNC plasma cutter table. Consider it done.”
So it turns out they have been playing with fire a lot longer than us. It was kind of the same thing, but they really like flammable costumes, and were not big fans of fire department regulations. Well, to each and their own. They sure put on a good show, and I guess it makes sense when they start at eight years old.
We need a German wheel you say? What’s a German wheel? Well, I figured that out pretty quickly and it turns out no one made them in the US. Who am I to tell someone they can hang upside down while playing with fire? I can make it in Solid Works it’s possible, right?
Say it and it will be done. So I put the manifesticals in to high gear and magically it appeared. That’s what the customers thought anyhow.
As it turns out, it actually wasn’t possible to do Nightmare Before Christmas without putting Santa Claus inside a flaming German wheel.
Yes, I did get suckered into being Jack. It also turns out I got to learn how to build, and use peg stilts.
Flaming trees? You can have a flaming forest without them, duh.
Back on stilts for this one, I had the light the forest. The fire department thought twice before taking my advice after this.
What good is an Alien vs. Predator performance without a good body burn? I was never one to let a vision go unfulfilled even if it was a vision that would’ve been more responsibly handled by other types of professionals.
This simple little project ended up being way more complicated than planned. However after purchasing an industrial laser cutter, a lot of cool new ideas emerged.
After letting the fame get to my head and convincing 20,000 people on Facebook that they should follow my bad ideas I couldn’t resist having a competition that lacked all direction and dignity.
BEST CONTEST EVER! - Win a flaming donkey!
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For one week only, you can win one of our hand crafted trophies!
First prize - Flaming Chainsaw of death! It's bloody, it's flaming and it's not available at S-Mart. This is your one chance to finally be the "cool kid."
Second Place - The one and only Flaming Donkey! Don't be fooled by imitations! This once in a life time opportunity combines your love of ass with your passion for fire. Plus, the convenient travel size lets you show it off everywhere you go.
Third prize - Do we have an offer for you! Party like it's 1989 with The Bieb! Get this limited edition "Ultimate Vacation" hat. It comes complete with an image of Justin Bieber! And this isn't just any hat. It is professionally mounted, and of course flaming!
I know you are asking yourself, how can this be true? So many great prizes in just one contest. The secret is in the special arrangement I made with myself to hand make these amazing prizes.
Act now to take advantage of this "risk free" offer, because we can't do this all day!
One of the staple props of any fire performer is the classic poi. We sold many thousands of these in every variation you can imagine. After moderate success with pant can poi we decided that wicking 55 gallon drums and attaching them to chains may be pushing it a bit. However, it turns out that these were satisfactory for most people, and it gave me a chance to get back up to speed on my Boy Scout knots.
So it turns out the bigger is always better. Talking about fire, right?
Shelves and shelves and shelves of fixtures. At our peak we had about 200 offerings of different props.
It turns out that many of the tools in our shop were useful in after hours too.
Oh, the kickstart a year. LED props were finally starting to take off and after creating some of the first high output prototype LED props in 2009 I figured, hey let’s take this mainstream. What could possibly go wrong?
So, I had a basic goal of making the brightest LED poi and staff on the market. However, I wasn’t bringing in enough backers with these two props to pay for my custom order of electronic components. So why not just add some LED fans and hula hoops. I don’t need to sleep, right?
To make a long project longer and hopefully the story a little shorter, I can summarize the whole thing into a very complex exercise on learning how to make electronics survive being launched across a parking lot and impacting on asphalt. This project was early on in the 3-D printing revolution and required a massive amount of learning as I went to make this possible.
As they say, experience is something you get right after you need it. Well I might want to add that it’s not right after you need it. This project continued to be refined for couple years and was a predecessor for much of what is offered today. To this day, I don’t believe that the quality has been matched to some of what was produced in this project.
And then there was Avatar. For fire conclave that year, we decided that we needed to create a huge LED jungle to stage our fire performers. Luckily for me, I was able to convince one of our performers that welding is fun. Sticking with tradition, I think Burning Man made about five more rules about what you couldn’t do in the Great Circle after this performance. They ended up hiring my wife to work for Burning Man, and drug me along. I think they were really just tired of managing our ridiculous performances and making us oversee other's performances instead was their easiest solution.
In the wearable props department, fireflies came to life. Over the years, countless custom creative endeavors were explored. It became quite humorous over the years as new talent with new grand ideas would approach us with their never before thought of moment of genius. They were always quite surprised that we already had those misadventures when they were still in diapers. Sometimes we even had the photos to prove it.
Over time Trick Concepts became primarily known for fire staffs. We were routinely making batches of hundreds of them in every configuration style. Who would’ve thought you could create a business around spinning a stick in the air.
One part aluminum tubing, check. Two pieces of Kevlar wick, check. Way too much Coleman camp fuel on your wicks, priceless. Pyro, it’s everything you want to be.
Fast-forward into the world of Dragon staves. This is the product that truly moved Trick Concepts where it is today. While simple in concept, the engineering behind it can be challenging. These staffs take massive amounts of abuse when dropped, or possibly thrown, yet they need to be affordable and lightweight. Over the years we offered several budget designs that use cable spines, and had some offerings with flexible spring-loaded spines. However at the end of the day, the design that won out just required some good old engineering and materials science to design every individual part to be as strong and lightweight as possible. This resulted in the smoothest and most rigid Dragon staff available.
If you really want to impress the crowd… And be a rockstar.
Dragon staff, there is no substitute.
Over the years, staffs were heavily refined with many options and price ranges. Just coming up with a very rigid breakdown design was a challenge. I will never forget the time that a customer picked up my staff and said I hate breakdown staffs and was commenting on how the solid staff that I made was so much better. I will never forget the look on his face as I took it apart for him and gave him the pieces. Apparently, I learned something in engineering school, and it was more than Jolt Cola could keep you awake long enough to study for a thermodynamics exam. I miss Jolt.
Not only am the owner I am also a client. I’m usually on the other side of the camera, but hey I did a little fire breathing too.
After all of this, who would’ve guessed that the California State Fire Marshal would enlist my wife and I to spearhead writing the guidelines for fire performance before a live audience through the United Fire Artists organization that we created.
Sometimes a customer had a good… bad… okay, let’s just say unique for the sake of argument, idea. In the world of less is more, sometimes more is just, well more. It was never a dull moment or typical day when dealing with creative customers. However, we never did get around to making that fire trebuchet. There is always next year.
Curtis never would take no for an answer.
Our family of misfits followed us through our adventures big and small, with failures and successes galore. At the end of the day we were always ready for the next challenge.
We conclude our adventures with our four horsemen of the Apocalypse performance at Burning Man. After all, nothing says finale like the end of the world. This is the end of our journey, please place seat backs and tray tables in their full upright position. If joining the circus is your final destination enjoy your time here. If not feel free to browse any of my other adventures for your amusement.
