Fire poi with bumps and contact

This has probably been answered in another thread, but since I am cautious when it comes to fire I would rather play it safe and ask again.
I have been using fire poi and want to incorporate the bumps and contacts I use with regular poi without turning into the human torch. I already have a spotter and am wearing cotton. I use arm, leg and back bumps and wind on my on side arm with weaves to add beats. Any advice and or suggestions?

Bumps shouldn't be a problem, and I also do wraps around my arms in weaves. The only thing you need to avoid is prolonged contact with your skin or clothing. I usually wear a long sleeved shirt and cotton canvas gauntlets and do wraps and bumps to my heart's content. Just make sure with the winding around the arm that you can reliably unwind it or else quickly drop your poi.

Ronan-style contact moves are probably a different story, and I've not seen those done with fire before.

Thanks! I'm going to give it a try this weekend. Now that the nights are getting cooler I can cover up better. I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one adding beats like that to the weave. I picked it up by accident, like most of the cool things I've learned with poi.

By the by, what is Ronan-style contact? My curiosity says "Interesting", but my self preservation says "NO!" :-)

Search YouTube for "Ronan poi". It's basically taking contact juggling moves and rolling the head of the poi along your body. Never seen it with fire, but it'd be badass. But dangerous too.

Lots of practice with unlit fire poi I suppose. If you can do it comfortably and quickly then there shouldn't be too big a problem. Wearing the right kinds of clothes or using a little water to dampen the areas before a burn will help. A friend of mine does contact fire poi and he always spritzes himself with a bit of water before a burn.

The biggest problem I see with contact poi is that you actually need a contact juggling ball (or similar). I doubt that a wick will roll properly and smoothly enough.

The actual contact is not very long, so you should be able to do it, especially with gloves.

Normal wraps and bumps are fine, even on bare skin. You *will* lose hair and you might get minor burns if you have a lot of metal on your poi head.

I'd imagine it wouldn't be too hard with a good monkeyfist.

I actually saw another post around here recently talking about making a fire contact ball with a wooden sphere covered in flat Kevlar wick. I imagine you could make poi heads that way, but they'd be dangerous for other reasons at that point

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihwei0jO4Yg this video has alright fire contact, Doesn't mention anything about what he uses tho, only that you shouldn't do it lol.

Edit: However has nothing to do with poi lol only contact juggling. I guess this is entirely irrelevant.

Now this one I've seen in person. He showed me it and I found out where to buy it thanks to google. http://www.trickconcepts.com/4-Inch-Fire-Contact-Juggling-Ball-P167C71.aspx

That looks awesome! Gotta practice more before I begin to think about any of that.

Thanks for all the info everyone!

Ed.

A lot of it is in your materials and fuel.

We spiral wrap fire snakes with gloves/arm protection using white gas if that says anything.

Good wicks shouldn't transfer fuel off to your clothing after being spun off.

Worry more about the chains burning you than the fire most of the time. It will singe hair pretty well but the fire is only as hot as your fuel burns. The metal in the components just gets hotter and hotter as the burn goes.

The only time fire really becomes a danger is prolonged contact, like a spiral wrap going really badly and getting tangled or something and you panic. If you just bring your hands towards the ground they will fall off before you hurt yourself badly.


if you would like me to point you in a direction for it, i know of another website that offers kevlar arm protection for wraps and contact stuff. Kevlar beanies and fire resistant shirts and such that are far more flame resistant than cotton.

It's not strictly true that the chains get hotter than the fire; entropy prohibits that. But the flame only transfers heat about as well as the air does, whereas metal transfers heat very quickly. The result is still pretty much the same, though: you need the flame to sit around on your skin to burn you, where the metal will burn you almost immediately.