One thing great about competitions like this is that you get exposed to all sorts of activities that you never knew existed before. Like stick juggling – it’s quite an interesting physics study in rotational dynamics.

Since a set of juggling sticks isn’t something that you can just get from your nearest supermarket, I thought it might be cool to make a set from scratch. After all, how hard can it be to decorate up a bunch of sticks?

Rather surprisingly, there aren’t that many how-to guides out there about how you actually go about making a set. Here’s three methods I found:

Hockey tape method: Hockey isn’t a common sport around here, but I figured tennis racket tape would work as a substitute. Except that one small roll was about $12, which was a leetle bit more than I was thinking of spending…

Electrical tape method: A variant of the above, but some quick tests showed that electrical tape was too smooth and not grippy enough.

Rubber tube method: Old inner tubes are about as elusive as hockey tape!

Then by chance, I spotted this at a neighbourhood store:

An anti-slip mat – now that should be grippy enough for a flower stick!

Making a set of flower sticks now becomes ridiculously straightfoward.

I’ve no idea how suitable this homemade set would be for advanced tricks, but it’s certainly good enough for one to learn the basics, and even spin a propeller or two. 🙂