Pill Bottle Gun

  1. Gather your materials:
    1. pill bottle
    2. 'hobby' knife... something to cut a circle in your pill bottle
    3. pen barrel
    4. electrical ignitor from electrical ligher (jet lighter) ($2.99 at walgreens)
    5. electrical tape
    6. glue (hot glue, plastic cement, etc) (if you use anything but hot glue, do not spark the chamber --> your glue will ignite and the gun will explode!)
    7. 2 screws that will nearly meet in the middle of the combustion chamber (pill bottle) (I used 3/4", the same as the radius of my pill bottle)
    8. A small section of sand paper (not always necessary, but recommended)
    9. a couple short wires
    10. hairspray or spray on deodorant. Right guard deodorant is the most explosive. Get the brown bottle kind.
    11. something to shoot out... BBs, qtips, anything
  2. Cut a hole on the side opposite the cap of your pill bottle that is barely big enough for your pen to fit through.
  3. Work the pen barrel through the hole, and try to keep it straight.
  4. Glue the barrel to the bottle. I used hot glue, it worked great. If you use flammable glue, do not hit your ignitor for a day or so.
  5. Get your 2 screws ready, and sand the tips of them.
  6. Put your 2 screws in at ~90° so that they do not touch but are very close. They should be positioned about 1/2way down the combustion chamber.
  7. rip apart a jet lighter (one of those lighters with a trigger) and take the ignitor out (the switch with a wire coming from it).
  8. Run 2 wires from the leads of the ignitor to your screws on the pill bottle. If your screws fit nice, you can screw them in so they hold the wire btwn the screw and the bottle.
  9. If you have a solder iron, solder the joints where you added wires. If not, use electrical tape to hold everything in place
  10. Tape your ignitor to the combustion chamber, cover all the leads with electical tape so you don't get shocked.
  11. If you used flammable glue, wait 12 hours or so. Then continue to 12
  12. Test the ignitor, you should see a spark jump across the gap btwn the 2 screws.
  13. Load something in the barrel, spray your fuel, cap the bottle, pull the trigger!

I used toilet paper wads to keep my projectiles from falling into the chamber, but the TP also increased the power for objects that didnt completely fill the barrel.
-Colin