Abstract The main focus of the present work is to investigate the collision of two oblique cylindrical water jets through a series of experiments. Different regimes for the collision of water jets are illustrated and transitions to the fingering instability and subsequently to the violent flapping regime are discussed. The collision between high inertia and low viscous liquid jets is often used for generating liquid sheets which atomize to form droplets. They are mainly used in the combustion chambers of rocket engines involving liquid fuels having viscosity of the order similar to water. Further, inertia-based asymmetry is studied and an analytical method is proposed ( L 1 error norm = 0.05) to understand the deflection observed in the plane of sheet formation. The resultant sheets formed are also compared with those generated by the collision of symmetric jets. The range of dimensionless numbers targeted in this study are within 10 ⩽ We ⩽ 1200 , 1.5 ⩽ Fr ⩽ 18.5 and 1900 ⩽ Re ⩽ 20 , 000 . We have also illustrated the life cycle of a single sheet in the low inertial regime to form chain-like structures. At last, a different method of generation of multiple interconnected sheets is demonstrated through the distortion of a sheet by the impact of a liquid jet.