Full Military power Flamethrower - Great or Terrible?

IronMonster · Aug 3, 2017

And of course the first time someone gets seriously hurt, which is bound to happen eventually, You might get a taste of what liability lawyers are like.

HuckleberryFun · Aug 3, 2017

You put the Fire in firearm, buddy. Nice to have hobbies!

Brster3 · Aug 3, 2017

The valves are remachined and are not available anywhere except from a back catalog from the manufacturer. There's no other valve that can obtain even half the flow rate, and then they must be remachined as well. The rotary unions. The tank fittings (there are zero high pressure tank fittings with openings > 1/8"). The flame holder. The nozzle. The frame and safety components. Then the tolerances and materials to have parts with large orifices that can handle very high pressures make them rare and expensive parts, just like a 50 cal has rare and expensive components to handle the size, pressure, and forces.
I certainly wish we could make them for less, that would be great! But there's no way unless they were made in huge volumes (thousands). The parts are CNC machined, but that still leads to well over a hundred dollars to as much as $500 for many parts, and when you assemble 50 parts and most are nearly unavailable or custom CNC machined...
We can sell them under $4000, the $8000 is what I believe Degroat or someone like him sold a few for several years ago - that's the only other time I've heard of a powerful, new manufacture flamethrower.
$2000 can't happen at high powers. We can make a version with one tank, no rotary fittings and flameholder and a spring loaded ball valve which would be more like the early German flamethrowers for under $2900 or so. Or we could make a less powerful one that more people might be more comfortable with, make it look like the real deal, or maybe a cool matte black, but maybe a 20 foot flame and a 6GPM flow rate. "Back yard and camping capable". That maybe could be $900-$1200. That's about all I can imagine that's possible... Thanks for the input, very much appreciated!