I’m very proud of this construction I made about 4 years ago.

It sits prominently on my office shelf, it has never failed to impress the occasional visitor :) Although it looks complicated, this 72-pencil construction is not very hard to build! I followed Matt Parker’s youtube tutorial, it took me about 1.5 hours to make it, and another hour or so to glue it.

Materials:

  • 72 pencils
  • a few elastic bands
  • super glue

Here in Israel, I couldn’t find non-sharpened pencils. There is some risk of (small) injury if you don’t take care 😬.

Without the elastic bands, this construction would not be stable. The problem is that with time the elastic bands get dry and disintegrate, so if you want to have this construction standing for a long time, you have to glue it. I put tiny drops of super glue in most of the touching points between the pencils, and it worked great!

Enjoy making your own!

PS: I’m in my office at the university writing these words, and exactly now a student passed in the corridor and asked me about the Hexastix 😄