Fire Breathing Dragon - Halloween Prop

Greetings and Happy Halloween!

What we have here is a mighty fire breathing dragon. It moves, blows fire and flaps wings.

I'm entering it into a Halloween Prop contest, so please vote! Thanks for looking.

The dragon consists of the metal head/neck, the wings which are made of wood and black plastic sheeting, and the fire breathing contraption which is made of a modified roofing torch.

All of that is mounted on the utility vehicle.

My kiddos and I rode this dragon last Halloween in our little town trick-or-treating. I modified it a bit since then for this year's Halloween.

The body is made out of tin. You can buy 3 x 4 ft pieces at Homedepot or Lowes.

My lovely wife traced an outline of a dragon's head, and I used tins nippers to cut the head and body out.

I used self tapping screws to hold it all together.

The body turned out to be angular, but it made it easier to attach to the UTV.

The scales are also made of tin. Homedepot/Lowes sell 15-20 ft rolls of it for the gutters.

I cut out rectangles, trimmed them into a tear shaped pieces and bended the edges with pliers to give them dimensions.

Next, the scales were screwed in to the body with the self tapping screws.

Paint is next. My lovely wife painted the head/neck green. Each individual scale was painted with green, brown and silver.

I added tin horns, ear flaps, nostrils and eye lashes ( it's a girl dragon) and she painted them red. She drew eyes, colored teeth, and outlined other features.

The U-brackets were used to attach the dragon to the grill on the UTV.

I bought a roofing propane torch from Harbor Fright ( I did not take the picture when I bought it, so the one you see is from their web site). It is affordable, and it has an ignition button, which is very convenient.

I had it modified to add a longer pipe. It was needed since I would be operating the flames from the drivers seat, and a standard pipe was just too short for me to reach.

On the last picture, you can see me testing it - the dragon was not fully done then, but I was itching to get to the fire breathing

The wings are made out of 1 by 2s connected with two inch bolts with washers.

I removed the original doors from the UTV and attached the wings.

The way the operate them is by pulling on the longer end from the driver's seat which in turn stretches the wings open.

Once the wing frames were built, we put black plastic sheets on them and spray painted them.

Image #4 shows the closed wing frame, images # 5 shows it opened.

Image #6 is a fully completed opened wing.

My kiddos and I will be riding around on this majestic beast on Halloween trick-or-treating.

I am hoping it will be a huge success this year.

Thanks for looking! Please vote early and vote often for me!