Bullet Bill Rocket by Seamster

Have you ever been killed by a Bullet Bill and thought “Man, I’d like to punch him right into space”. Well now’s your chance. Seamster over at instructables has put together a set of instructions on how to make your very own Bullet Bill Rocket.

Bullet Bill is a character that has appeared as an enemy in almost all of the Super Mario games from the very beginning. There are a few varieties, and their look and behavior has changed over the years. Like me, I’m sure you’ve been killed by a Bullet Bill many times.

I enjoy making crazy, non-traditional model rockets. I built regular ones as a kid, and I still find it extremely rewarding to test out new building methods and trying to push what I can do with simple, inexpensive materials.

I thought it would be neat to build a life-size Bullet Bill model rocket, as it provided all sorts of great challenges. I ended up building two versions, both of which I thought were beautiful in many ways, and they taught me a lot of new tricks.

Version 1 is covered briefly in steps 1 – 3. I began this first attempt with most of the planning focused on how to create a lightweight, visually accurate model of Bullet Bill. I didn’t think much about its flight-worthiness until it was complete. At that point, I knew it surely wouldn’t fly well, but thought, “Well, lets just go shoot this off and see what happens.”

It didn’t end pretty. The video is in step 3.

For version 2, which the photos show here, I applied the building techniques I learned with version 1, but paid closer attention to giving it a shot at actually flying. It was scaled down a bit, and built (somewhat) more like a real model rocket. The video of the launch of version 2 is in step 15.

Take a look at the steps involved and if you have any questions, please feel free to ask!