YouTubers and Redditors Are Making DIY Clones of Elon Musk's Flamethrower

Several weeks ago you may have seen Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk selling flamethrowers on the internet to raise money for his Boring Company infrastructure project. Needless to say these inferno bringers sold like wildfire. It took only four days for Musk to sell 20,000 of the flamethrowers for $500 each.

While Musk’s version may be sold out, this has not stopped some from going the do-it-yourself route.

One of these intrepid pyromaniacs, YouTuber Jason Salerno, uploaded his Boring Company clone earlier this month. Salerno’s version is made of an airsoft gun, a propane torch, a propane tank, a propane extension hose, and one bottle holder extracted from an unsuspecting bicycle.

The creator began by stripping the white airsoft gun clean and removing all the firing mechanisms. He then had to modify the blowtorch to fit in the plastic gun’s handle. He then reinserted all the necessary components to transform the plastic pea shooter to a handheld firebreather. Salerno did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Motherboard.

And last but not least, he added a black stenciled sticker featuring the Boring Company brand name.

A redditor with the username rainman95135 took Salerno’s video as inspiration and set out to make his own version of the flamethrower. On Reddit, rainman95135 said the materials for his flamethrower cost $189.

Not surprisingly, Musk’s flamethrowers have been met with some opposition. New York Reps. Eliot Engel and Carolyn Maloney introduced bill H.R. 4901 (also known as the “Flamethrowers? Really? Act”) in response, which would ban flamethrowers that shoot fire more than six feet and would "treat flamethrowers like machine guns." The bill would define a flamethrower as:

“Any non stationarity or transportable device designed or intended to ignite and then emit or propel a burning streak of a combustible or flammable substance a distance of at least 6 feet away.”

But it appears that with a little ingenuity, anyone can get their hands on one of these—and for about $300 less than what Musk is selling them for.