Water Rocket Forum

Hello There,

We have recently had a large upgrade of many of our previous Water Rocket techniques, and have made a new Rocket out of them called Blue Diamond 2 referring to the number of Spliced Bottles:

1) We have made some new fins that use 2 seperate fin jackets to help secure them to the rocket and move them between bottles and rockets should we need that:
2) We have made some new fairings to go in between bottles, to help stop the rocket bending during flight, with a Rail Button attached to them, along with a new logo:
3) We are using the commercial Tornado Coupling with 2 rubber O-Rings in them to give a nice seal:
4) We have rebuilt the Side Deploy Parachute release mechanism, to suit the new Parachutes made from old Umbrellas:
5) We have used a new technique for Splicing Bottles which involves using 2 glues, one for the seal and another for the strength:
6) We now use an adaptor we made that allows use to put a 15mm Release head into the 9mm release head, giving the rocket a 16mm Nozzle and a 15mm- 1000mm Launch Tube:
Here are some Pictures of the Rocket:

Filling the Rocket from the middle and then screwing the top section on:
Packing the Parachute into the new release system.
Take off!:
I Hope you like it, please feel free to comment or give some constructive criticism! For more details feel free to email me or visit the links in the signature below!

Jamie B
JSB Rocketry

Jamie5335 wrote:Hello There,

We have recently had a large upgrade of many of our previous Water Rocket techniques, and have made a new Rocket out of them called Blue Diamond 2 referring to the number of Spliced Bottles:

I Hope you like it, please feel free to comment or give some constructive criticism! For more details feel free to email me or visit the links in the signature below!

Jamie B
JSB Rocketry

That's a great looking rocket you have made. Congrats!

Thanks bugwubber, its nice to get positive feedback! The Rocket itself is soon to be enlarged, and we will use a new compressor to go to 130 psi!

Jamie B
JSB Rocketry

Jamie5335 wrote:
I Hope you like it, please feel free to comment or give some constructive criticism! For more details feel free to email me or visit the links in the signature below!

Jamie B
JSB Rocketry

It seems you build not only a nice rocket, but also a great launcher. Also liked the ideia to use old umbrellas for the parachute.

I have just visited your website and enjoyed the videos from Blue Diamond 1. Hope to see videos from this new rocket soon.

Thanks for the compliments bud!

The launcher was rebuilt a couple of months ago due to the fact that we needed a guide rail, which is just made out of a certain rail!

We got the idea of using umbrellas to make the parachutes from Air Command, who use a larger parachute for the Acceleron Rocket:

I am glad you like the Website, the main website is www.jsbrocketry.webs.com if you haven't visited it already! Blue Diamond 3 will have its maiden voyage tomorrow and I will post a Youtube vid new topic as well!

Feel free to email me for more queries:

Cheers Jamie B
JSB Rocketry

Jamie5335 wrote: 3) We are using the commercial Tornado Coupling with 2 rubber O-Rings in them to give a nice seal:

DSC01146 c.jpg

Those tornado couplers are interesting. Where did you get them from? The ones that we've seen are opaque, and the ones you have are pretty transparent, which would make it much easier to see if the washer was seated properly. They are awesome looking.

Hello U.S. Water Rockets,

We had issues about weather how we should join the two ends of the bottle. Either we were going to make our own couplings, or we thought about buying them after the pressure test that Air Command did upto 270 psi without issues so we went with those, we just widen them to put the launch tube through- we found them on ebay.

Here is the link: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TORNADO-TUBE- ... 48487b2814

Many people have said that they crack when done up tightly, and that is an issue. We solved this by using these fantastic Rubber O-Rings with took a while to find! These don't obstruct the flow and allow the 15 mm launch tube to be inserted, and yes being see through helps to see if the washers are seated properly!
Hope that helped,

Jamie B
JSB Rocketry

Jamie5335 wrote:Hello U.S. Water Rockets,

We had issues about weather how we should join the two ends of the bottle. Either we were going to make our own couplings, or we thought about buying them after the pressure test that Air Command did upto 270 psi without issues so we went with those, we just widen them to put the launch tube through- we found them on ebay.

Here is the link: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TORNADO-TUBE- ... 48487b2814

Many people have said that they crack when done up tightly, and that is an issue. We solved this by using these fantastic Rubber O-Rings with took a while to find! These don't obstruct the flow and allow the 15 mm launch tube to be inserted, and yes being see through helps to see if the washers are seated properly!

DSC01152 c.jpg

Hope that helped,

Jamie B
JSB Rocketry

Thanks for sharing the link. The combination of the o-rings with the tubes looks like it would work well. The reports of cracking could be a concern, especially if they were to be used at higher pressures. The pressure may cause them to burst, if just tightening them can cause cracks. It may be worth doing some tests.

Jamie5335 wrote:
Many people have said that they crack when done up tightly, and that is an issue. We solved this by using these fantastic Rubber O-Rings with took a while to find! These don't obstruct the flow and allow the 15 mm launch tube to be inserted, and yes being see through helps to see if the washers are seated properly!

I tried these out a couple of years ago, for the same reason as you: they seemed a ready-made coupling solution. However I can confirm that they develop spiral fractures when stressed. I would not trust them to hold at high pressures and the brittle plastic will fragment and create fast moving shrapnel.

It is fairly easy to fabricate strong safe nozzle to nozzle coupling using mechanical fastenings and bottle caps.

rockets-in-brighton wrote:

Jamie5335 wrote:
Many people have said that they crack when done up tightly, and that is an issue. We solved this by using these fantastic Rubber O-Rings with took a while to find! These don't obstruct the flow and allow the 15 mm launch tube to be inserted, and yes being see through helps to see if the washers are seated properly!

I tried these out a couple of years ago, for the same reason as you: they seemed a ready-made coupling solution. However I can confirm that they develop spiral fractures when stressed. I would not trust them to hold at high pressures and the brittle plastic will fragment and create fast moving shrapnel.

It is fairly easy to fabricate strong safe nozzle to nozzle coupling using mechanical fastenings and bottle caps.

nylon_tornado_coupling_parts.jpg

nylon_tornado_coupling_assembled.jpg

nylon_tornado_coupling_connected.jpg

What part developed the stress cracks? The white plastic bottle caps, or the nylon bolt?

rockets-in-brighton wrote:

Jamie5335 wrote:
Many people have said that they crack when done up tightly, and that is an issue. We solved this by using these fantastic Rubber O-Rings with took a while to find! These don't obstruct the flow and allow the 15 mm launch tube to be inserted, and yes being see through helps to see if the washers are seated properly!

I tried these out a couple of years ago, for the same reason as you: they seemed a ready-made coupling solution. However I can confirm that they develop spiral fractures when stressed. I would not trust them to hold at high pressures and the brittle plastic will fragment and create fast moving shrapnel.

It is fairly easy to fabricate strong safe nozzle to nozzle coupling using mechanical fastenings and bottle caps.

nylon_tornado_coupling_parts.jpg

nylon_tornado_coupling_assembled.jpg

nylon_tornado_coupling_connected.jpg

Thanks for Reply,

Yours look good and secure. I like the idea of Combining the robinson coupling and the tornado tube!! It is just that we need a large 15mm hole for the launch tube to move through which is a necessary evil! And we haven't tried the Robinson Coupling yet!!

Have you had one of the commercial types of Coupling actually Explode?? At what pressure do they Stress??

Cheers,

I didn't test them to destruction, it was pretty obvious they were going to fail. I was using low pressure, no more than 8 bar/120 psi so the fracture was most probably due to over tightening enough to make them not leak under pressure; using internal O rings would help, still I was unnerved by how easily they crack.

The tubes were sold by an educational supplies company and are designed to join unpressurised bottles neck to neck, to demonstrate the vortex that develops when a liquid flows from top to bottom (hence "tornado" coupling). I think they are acrylic.

Jamie5335 wrote:

rockets-in-brighton wrote:

Jamie5335 wrote:
Many people have said that they crack when done up tightly, and that is an issue. We solved this by using these fantastic Rubber O-Rings with took a while to find! These don't obstruct the flow and allow the 15 mm launch tube to be inserted, and yes being see through helps to see if the washers are seated properly!

I tried these out a couple of years ago, for the same reason as you: they seemed a ready-made coupling solution. However I can confirm that they develop spiral fractures when stressed. I would not trust them to hold at high pressures and the brittle plastic will fragment and create fast moving shrapnel.

It is fairly easy to fabricate strong safe nozzle to nozzle coupling using mechanical fastenings and bottle caps.

nylon_tornado_coupling_parts.jpg

nylon_tornado_coupling_assembled.jpg

nylon_tornado_coupling_connected.jpg

Thanks for Reply,

Yours look good and secure. I like the idea of Combining the robinson coupling and the tornado tube!! It is just that we need a large 15mm hole for the launch tube to move through which is a necessary evil! And we haven't tried the Robinson Coupling yet!!

Have you had one of the commercial types of Coupling actually Explode?? At what pressure do they Stress??

Cheers,

rockets-in-brighton wrote:I didn't test them to destruction, it was pretty obvious they were going to fail. I was using low pressure, no more than 8 bar/120 psi so the fracture was most probably due to over tightening enough to make them not leak under pressure; using internal O rings would help, still I was unnerved by how easily they crack.

The tubes were sold by an educational supplies company and are designed to join unpressurised bottles neck to neck, to demonstrate the vortex that develops when a liquid flows from top to bottom (hence "tornado" coupling). I think they are acrylic.

The acrylic ones seem to have a better seat to position a washer, while the opaque ones are made from ABS plastic which is much less prone to stress cracks, but the seat for the bottle is too small to place a washer. The ones that don't crack are hard to get a good seal.