Playing With Fire

Today turned into such fun!!
I bought a blowtorch (the sort you use to caramelise creme brulee) from Robin's Kitchen (all torches were $39.99 today - the one I bought felt the most comfortable to hold PLUS it came with 4 ramekins - score!)

I've been trying to experiment with the inside of Pepsi Max cans for a while - in an earlier post I talked about holding the metal above my gas stove - OK result but took forever.  The other day I tried to bake it under the grill - absolutely NO result after about 20 minutes...

But today!  The blowtorch was perfect.  That is, it was perfect once I figured out how to fill it with butane.  Confronted with the lid of the can of butane I mentally went "huh?".

Holly had the bright idea of taking the lid OFF.  The coloured bits you see in the photo are the bottoms of the various attachments - each of which fits a different lighter...or other device.  Great - which one for me?  I tried to fill the torch without using a fitting - oops - butane everywhere.  At that stage I thought I had better turn the kitchen fan on....yes, for those observant ones among you, I was playing with fire in the kitchen...  Anyway, I found that the white plug worked, so step one accomplished.  I hit the ignite button and whoosh - wonderful fire.

Within seconds the can was metamorphosing...

This is extremely thin aluminium, so can be sewn through or otherwise played with.  I am going to have some more fun cutting and sewing it into projects (cutting is easy with a rotary cutter).

By the way, opening up the can is not for those of you who faint at the sound of nails on blackboards - it is not pleasant,

 but a tough knife will get things going, and then a regular pair of scissors will do the rest...

WARNING - this bit of fun produces a LOT of fumes.  I took my kit and caboodle into the yard and finished the process there.  With all the rain we've had, I knew that if anything caught fire I could just drop it and the drenched earth would quench the flames.