How to use a fire contact ball 🔥🔮

Here are my experiences wrapped up in a digest. This will tell you what works and what you should avoid. What kind of fuel to use and what moves are good when doing fire contact juggling. Let's get started.

Skill level

First things first: fire contact juggling is not for beginners.

You should have a little bit of control over the ball and be able to do some body rolls without dropping it too often. You don't have to be a pro, but you should already have progressed with body rolls. If you don't have these skills yet, there are some great resources on youtube to teach you the ins and outs of body rolls.

Fuel

Use alcohol at 70%.

Isopropyl, aka isopropanol, aka IPA, works best. It's just rubbing alcohol. That's what you use to disinfect your hands every day during covid. This fuel burns a lot less hot then something like lamp oil. You can get it on ebay or at any pharmacy which makes it also a great toy to travel with since the next pharmacy is never far away. Alcohol also evaporates quickly and thus it doesn't smell strong for too long. 70% means that 30% of the liquid is water and water doesn't burn or evaporate so it will stay on the ball after you've used it until it dried up again. So the first time in the evening it will work best because the ball was still dry. The second time it will burn a little less long since it's wet from the first time. The third time it will be even wetter and so on... That's just something to keep in mind.

How to soak it

I usually soak the whole ball in isopropanol, I get a burntime of about four minutes out of it. The flow wizard's fire contact balls have about 3.2m of 10mm thick kevlar rope around the ball which makes it soak up the liquid really well. In order to stop alcohol from pouring over, you should put a metal plate underneath it while pouring the IPA over it. Then put the remaining ipa back into the bottle in case you spill some.

What to wear

You don't have to, but it's good to wear a long sleeve cotten shirt. Not because otherwise you'll burn yourself, but because you will burn your precious armhair. Since we're rolling a ball that's soaked with alcohol over our body, your clothes will also absorb some of the alcohol which will consequently make your clothes smell like strong alcohol. A wizard finds it best to wear a dedicated long sleeve cotten shirt when fire contact juggling.

More people doing fire contact juggling?

A wizard would be very excited to see more people doing fire contact juggling Fire contact juggling is something that looks very cool, magical and mesmerizing. When a wizard performs with the fire contact ball for a crowd he always gets a lot of attention and people are always wondering how he does it. Fire contact juggling is not very much around for several reasons:

Contact juggling is just hard and not many people are good at it
Fire contact juggling means that you are in direct contact with the fire and that seems very stressful/dangerous to many people even those who would be good enough to do it.
Many people don't know how to do it, which is why I'm making this video

Where to get a fire ball

There are several options. The first one is do one yourself. All you need is a needle, a kevlar string, 3.2m 10mm kevlar rope and an aluminium ball. Stitch the whole thing together and voila. Check out the DIY video that I made on how to build your own fire contact ball.

The second option is to buy one from me, the flow wizard (Germany). I have a shop on etsy, but since etsy is milking it's vendors like crazy, I would appreciate it if you just send me a message on instagram and order one from me like that. I usually charges 120€ for a ball, but I'm also up for a trade.

Your third options is to buy one from Brandon, from the Flow Mancer from Australia. Our paths crossed at Spinfest 2017 in Australia. He was impressed by the fire contact ball that I built and he was eager to make one himself but with a knot instead of stitching. I was sceptical at first, but eventually he figured it out. He uses a special globe knot for crafting a fire ball. To make a big knot like that is actually pretty tricky. In addition to that, it has many sides, and several ropes next to each other on each side (Good job Brandon!). I've seen his ball before at conventions and his fire contact ball works really well.

In case you know of any other vendor who sells fire contact balls please write it in the comments.

How to juggle the fire

Rule #1: Always keep the ball moving. When it starts to burn I usually do isolation movements like the enigma and hold it in one spot so that the ball starts fire properly. Once the whole ball is on fire I start to do the full body and arm rolls. The full body rolls are the best since the ball will not be in touch with the body for too long and your skin won't heat up and burn. Furthermore you can also just have it in your flat palm. You usually have a couple of seconds until it gets too hot. When it gets too hot you can transition into the other hand or the the tips of your fingers.