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As kids growing up in a village, my friends and I played with button whirligigs and we made them out of broken pieces of clay pots discarded by our parents: Tak
by happy-go-lucky 9y ago
As kids growing up in a village, my friends and I played with button whirligigs and we made them out of broken pieces of clay pots discarded by our parents: Take a piece, rub its boundary on a hard irregular surface until it is smooth and discoid, make a hole in the center (take care not to break the object), pass a thread through this hole and keep the thing at the midpoint of the thread. Hold the two ends of the thread with your hands, spin it for a while and stop, and then immediately start whirling the thing by alternately pulling and releasing the tension on the thread.
Here’s a wiki with some nice drawings:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirligig#Button_whirligigs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirligig#Button_whirligigs
We also made ropes with jute, spinning tops of wood with an iron tip etc. We could not afford to buy things such as these. It was fun :)
- dmix 9y agoThat brought me down some interesting Wikipedia journey, this former farm machine repairman built a whole collection of Whirligigs for two decades after he retired: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u89j6-FI6fk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u89j6-FI6fk He was hard-worker his whole and he couldn't sit around all day, so he spent 6-days a week (except Sundays) building some really creative "kinetic art" from old machine parts. The town of Wilson, NC has turned it into a park after he died: https://www.wilsonwhirligigpark.org/ https://www.wilsonwhirligigpark.org/
- gxs 9y agoInteresting, our process was way simpler. Flatten a bottle cap and make two holes in it with a nail.
- hinkley 9y agoOurs was even lazier. Find an oversized button.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]