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Design

This Dude Made the World's Largest Fidget Spinner Costume

Craftsman and blogger Rob Cockerham walks us through how he built a six foot tall, wearable fidget spinner.
Images courtesy the artist

Why waste time and money playing with a handheld fidget spinner when you can wear a six foot tall one on your face? Rob Cockerham, a craftsman and blogger from San Fransisco, has tapped into the current cultural zeitgeist to build the world's largest fidget spinner costume, the first of its kind. Cockerham runs a website called Cockeyed where he blogs about his different builds, odd science experiments, and public pranks, among other things.

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For his most recent project, Cockerham walks his readers through how he built an enormous fidget spinner costume out of styrofoam and plywood. He believes—rightfully so—that any costume referencing a viral fad in popular culture is bound to be a crowd pleaser. When Cockerham found out that Wizard World Comic Con was coming to his hometown of Sacramento, he knew he had to do something special. Cockerham tells Creators, "The fidget spinner is destined to be among the fastest in-and-out fads of all time, so the timing of Sacramento Comic Con was ideal. This costume isn't going to be cool by Halloween."

The first challenge of the build was to find a bearing big enough to fit around his face; Cockerham's logic being that if it's around his face, he's "dressed" as a spinner, whereas if it was around his waist, he would be "wearing" a spinner. He settled on a 12" Lazy Susan bearing he found at an ACE Hardware for $13. Cockerham cut a hole for his face in the Lazy Susan, which he describes as the heavy-duty version of the turntable inside a microwave. He had a few PVC harnesses from previous costumes lying around his garage, and Cockerham bent the pipes so the costume could rest on his shoulders while the bearing sat right around his face.

Then, Cockerham turned his attention to crafting the fidget spinner itself. The material needed to be lightweight but strong enough so screws would hold, so he decided to glue a sheet of styrofoam to a thin piece of plywood. The piece ended up only weighing 12 pounds. Each of the three circles in Cockerham's spinner have a 15 inch radius. Once he carved out the piece, he painted the base blue and used Metal-FX Contact Shelf paper to give the outside circles that metallic spinner look. Check out the finished product in the video below:

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Check out more projects by Rob Cockerham on his website.

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