How Do You Use A Powerball ?

What have I missed here, don't you half fill them with washing liquid and place on top of your laundry in the machine?

No wait, it's the red ball in the dishwasher tabs?
 
Bananadude said:
I've had one of these for ages. Hadn't used it in a while but seeing them on OCUK peaked my interested again so I dug mine out today. I lost the string ages ago, so I tried with my thumb. Couldn't do it. Tried dozens of times but with no luck. So I hit upon the GENIUS idea of creating a new string! I got a bit of string and fed it round the ball. I pulled. But I lost grip on the string before it came out all the way and it got pulled back in and got wound up round the side of the ball mechanism. Oops. Tried to get it out but it was well and truly tangled up. So I hit the thing with a hammer and it cracked and split in two. It's well and truly shafted now so I guess I'll just have to buy a new one. Oh well.

:)
Click to expand...

When I lost mine I wrapped a bit of tape around the end of the string, and then trimmed it so it fitted the hole, worked pretty much as the original one did.
 
Jonny69 said:
What have I missed here, don't you half fill them with washing liquid and place on top of your laundry in the machine?

No wait, it's the red ball in the dishwasher tabs?
Click to expand...
OcUK sell them, i recommend getting the metal one.. only use it when tumbledrying though.. its a real show!
 
Bananadude said:
I've had one of these for ages. Hadn't used it in a while but seeing them on OCUK peaked my interested again so I dug mine out today. I lost the string ages ago, so I tried with my thumb. Couldn't do it. Tried dozens of times but with no luck. So I hit upon the GENIUS idea of creating a new string! I got a bit of string and fed it round the ball. I pulled. But I lost grip on the string before it came out all the way and it got pulled back in and got wound up round the side of the ball mechanism. Oops. Tried to get it out but it was well and truly tangled up. So I hit the thing with a hammer and it cracked and split in two. It's well and truly shafted now so I guess I'll just have to buy a new one. Oh well.

:)
Click to expand...

As far as I'm aware, they are fully customer maintainable, ie you should be able to take them to bits completely without breaking anything. They should also be covered by a lifetime guarantee, they even sent out two replacement strings when I told them I had lost them (which I had).
 
Got one a few weeks ago - Green Neon - looks great walking around the house with lights out :p

Managed 10,275 so far - thats hard to get to let alone hold ... should be interesting to see how far i can go in a few months time :D
 
JonC said:
As far as I'm aware, they are fully customer maintainable, ie you should be able to take them to bits completely without breaking anything. They should also be covered by a lifetime guarantee, they even sent out two replacement strings when I told them I had lost them (which I had).
Click to expand...
I had one of the first ones. Years old. Didn't come apart. I'm not too bothered though. I want to get one of the new ones with the LCD readout anyway, so having busted this one is a good excuse! ;)
 
what happens if you plonk your thumb onto the inner part while its doing 10,000rpm?

ouches.
 
OK, I just bought one of these things for my nephew.

and I'm rogered if I can get the darn thing to work... :(
(I think I've got a duff one, as the pre-opened box didn't contain any instructions either...)


first off, how much play is there supposed to be, I get about 1mm up and down.
second, after pulling the rip cord, it'll stop after about 9 seconds, I'd kinda expected it to spin a fair bit longer than that.


OK, if all that's normal, can someone give me an idiots guide to this ?
I don't get how I can spin this up without the weight being off centre ?

Am I supposed to try and follow the spinning motion of the ring, jiggle it at right angles ?
I don't get how holding it LCD face up will do anything ???


I can see it making a nice circular hole in the wall at this rate...


for what it's worth, here's the website
http://www.powerballs.com/faq.php
.
 
Last edited:
Leave about 2/3 inches of the cord at the end. When you pull it twist the wrist round slowly, in large circles. If you start bashing straight away it'll stop ;)

Eventually you'll notice it picking up speed, after which you can progressivly start twisting your wrist faster.
 
Last edited:
wait, I've got it !

Thanks 5ingh, you're a star!

you're right, the slow waving motion idea must be the key, I was trying to do it fast like the youtube vids.

OK, for other people struggling:

hold ball in fingertips, LCD pointing to palm
pull cord fairly briskly as above,
hold arm at about 45 deg downwards,
hold arm steady and wave the ball anticlockwise in a slow motion (1 to 0.5 revs a second) using only the wrist, pointing the base out at 45deg as you rotate it.
(imagine the spinny thing gives out a light beam though the base and you are trying to trace a bigger circle on the floor)
if you feel the ball jump, you are going too fast.
you should feel the ball push against the motion.

only 2 minutes playing time and 6000 revs and I'm knackered now,
this is really going to shut my nephew up. :D


.
 
Last edited:
My worst blisters seem to be on my palm where the knuckles are. Also seem to have hit a wall around the 13k mark :(
 
Being that I bought a powerball like 2 years ago then dropped it crazy amounts of times when trying to get it working and probably damaging it in the process making it much harder to spin up I thought I might be able to answer this well.

I think the main reason I couldn't get it working when I first bought it was because I was adopting EVH's approach :o

Yesterday I undusted my powerball which I hadn't tried using 2 years because I didn't spent enough time trying to get it working consistently. I spent half an hour trying to do so then bam it worked everytime!

Heres the secret, you need to feel the vibrations and force coming from the ball and feel how it wants your hand to move then you need to copy this movement whilst not going too fast at first. You will notice if your going too fast because it will make a funny noise. So slow at first, maybe 1 circle movement per second then once you get the right movement you can speed it up at exactly the right pace allowing for maximum speed up of the rotor. Then as someone else mentioned, do smaller circles to get it going faster.

Just started powerballing so my max score is only 8549 at the moment.
 
Last edited:
Picked mine up after 12 months. Still can't start it. Failed. Put down. :(

I found the cord jammed more often than not when I tried to use that. :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom