Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 05

THE JAM JAR JET

By William Gurstelle

Photography by William Gurstelle

Don’t think you can build a jet engine at home? Here’s a simple jet engine — a pulsejet — that you can make out of a jam jar in an afternoon. All it takes is bending some wire and punching a few holes. ≫

Set up: p.105 Make it: p.106 Use it: p.109

JOIN THE JET SET

Turbojets and fanjets contain hundreds of rotating parts. But the ancestors of these designs, called pulsejets, convert fuel and air into propulsive force by using a fixed geometry of chambers and ducts, with no moving parts. The simplest pulsejet is the Reynst combustor, which uses one opening for both air intake ...