2-liter Bottle Launcher
3 Pages

A request from my brother-in-law for a bottle launcher for my nephew's Cub-Scout troup got me started on this project. Since it looked like fun for me too, I built two! The launchers were built from plans in the October/November 2002 Machinist's Workshop magazine. The article was by Paul Smeltzer titled "Two-liter Bottle Launcher". Paul's article was well written and no problems were encountered building the launchers to plan. So far, I've used about 100psi and 1/3 water fill in the bottle with great results. Without top weight, nose cone or fins, I was reaching heights of about 100 feet or so. A nose cone made from a 3" plastic funnel seemed to add another 25 feet, but did not eliminate tumbling after the water was expelled. Four small fins did absolutely nothing to help. See page 3 for first really successful height gains.