Giant Magnetic Sticks Set

These sticks and balls are a scaled up version of the many small sticks and balls sets you’ve probably seen before. It’s fun to be able to go inside the structures you build. I made sure each stick would have a north and a south pole. And later I marked them with white tape which is helpful when building. If a ball gets too many white or black ends on it they start to not stick very well. So the marking helps to mix it up. It’s not necessary, but nice. I found these tubes at a local surplus store so the length is arbitrary. You can obviously make them whatever size you want.

24 or more ½” OD x 35” fiberglass tubes

100 or more disk magnets ⅜”x 3/32”

20 or more ⅞” diameter steel ball bearings

hot glue

white tape

Mark one end of the tubes with some white tape.

Mark the polarity of your magnets with a sharpie. A black dot is all you need. The black dotted ends will face the black (unmarked) end of the sticks. The unmarked sides of the magnets will face the white ends.

Hot glue two magnets into each end of the tube using a ball to set the depth while the glue cools as shown. Once cool pick off the extra glue squeeze out.

Kids might like to clip sheets to their structures to enclose the space. Have fun.