Matchstick Launcher

Warning: Don’t build this!! If you do build it, don’t use it!! You have been warned.

I bought a box of clothes pins. I use them to seal chip bags, bread, whatever. WAY cheaper than the plastic purpose built ‘chip clips’. And a box will last forever…

While putting these away, I remembered back to the matchstick launcher my Dad showed my brother and I how to build. Given we were both in elementary school at the time, it probably wasn’t one of his better parenting choices. Fortunately my mom did not buy kitchen matches or we probably would have burned the house down.

I hadn’t built such a launcher in decades so I went to the interwebs looking for instructions on exactly how to rearrange the spring into a trigger.

Oddly, there were complicated versions of a ‘matchstick gun’ that required some cutting and/or carving. Further, they all seemed to require lighting the match before launching. Tho those designs were admittedly superior, I couldn’t find a version of my Dad’s simple design – one so simple an elementary student could build 🙂

After some messing around I figured out how to build his version of a matchstick launcher. In his memory, I am posting it online. Thanks Dad, for this and the other poor parenting choices you made that made life fun!

Look at the picture and you will see how to rearrange the spring onto one side of the pin to turn it into a ‘gun’ with a trigger. Then simply lay a kitchen match on top, match head facing the spring. Pull the trigger, and the match will be lit and flicked.

I don’t have any kitchen matches on me to test with, but it will launch a cotton swab about 10 feet.

There is no ‘barrel’, no control over where it goes, and the trigger is extremely sensitive. It is an accident looking to happen. Again, don’t build this!!