You should scrape out that soot and use it as charcoal to make BP for your ejection charges. Incidentally, does your Mean Machine have any interesting mods? Perhaps an eel's head instead of a nose cone?
From a couple of miles away, I've seen the results of one of those dirty chimneys. On a very icy night when the volunteer firemen couldn't get there in any reasonable amount of time. Save the pine for making rocket fins.
I'm afraid I haven't studied your extensive oevre enough to understand "SAVE THE CAKES!". My apologies.
Unless you have them already, it may be just as easy, and cheaper, to get just an LED and a resistor. One that's rated a few thousand mcd ought to be enough for daylight. Take the supply voltage and subtract the nominal voltage of the LED, then divide the remaining voltage by the nominal current to find the correct resistance, in ohms, to use. Both components should be under a buck, and you can get the LEDs in all sorts of pretty colors, and even ones that blink. If you don't feel like an archeological dig at the site that was your local Radio Shack, you can get these at Electronic Goldmine or Aretronics. If they don't have the Goldilocks LED, Digikey probably will, and maybe just as cheap. Those in the Boston area can go to You Do It in Needham or thereabouts. Or Electronics Plus in Littleton.
I have helped a friend dispose of his surplus static models with a .22, but you have to stay a bit more serious when doing that. It's also possible, with the right fuel-air mix, to make a plastic dinosaur breath fire, but I should have been a bit more serious, or at least I should have made sure the tail didn't have a leak. Did not burn down the house, though.