Julia, my dad had one about 20 or 25 yeqars ago. He built it himself from plans he found in mother earth news.
It worked very well for keeping the edges of paths , driveways etc free of weeds.
I wanted one this spring but balked at the price. Don't see why it should be illegal. It runs off of a propane tank the same as a gas grill on your patio. A normal amount of caution to avoid out of control fires would be needed but certainly less harmful than a lot of sprays that blow or wash into the neighbor5's yard.

I bought one. It didn't work very well for keeping our gravel parking area free of weeds, plus it was really hot to use in the summer, and I felt guilty about the propane I was burning. So I quit using it.

My neighbor got one to help control the weeds on his gravel drive and brick walkways, and my husband & I spent hours laughing at him (subsiding to chuckles after the first hour or so) watching him burning the little weeds one by one, when it would have taken lots less time for him to just pull them up. At the end of the summer he admitted that he had made a "guy purchase" (apologies to the men out there in Midatl gardening land) but was too proud to quit using the stupid thing after he realized it didn't work. His wife later told us she spent a lot of time chuckling behind the curtains watching him as well.

I am not sure I would call that a "guy purchase". A real guy would have fixed that thing up so that he could stand in one spot, beer in hand, and flame all the weeds in a few quick passes. One weed at a time? What a wimp! ;-)

- Brent

Ha, yeah! I think that's how he envisioned the thing working. Just like on TV! The worst part of it was, the weeds all came back within a couple of weeks! Meantime, I had handweeded our parking pad and it looked great ... ;-)

Jean

Alfie, if you still have yours and don't want it, I'll take it!

Hello,
We are spanish farmers. You can see more in www.cherrita.com
We have 50 Has. of cherry cultivars. We use biological processes.
We need flame weeders for control the weed only in the line of trees.
Do you know the better equipment?.
Thank you very much.
My e-mail is:
cherrita@cherrita.com

Here is a link that might be useful: Cherrita

I bought one a couple years ago to try to kill the crabgrass in the yard. It permanently killed the fescue, but the crabgrass regenerated. It was easy to use and control the flame.