Tennis balls are ubiquitous and inexpensive. They're great for tennis... for a little while. Then they lose that carefree, Tigger-like bounciness and become dog toys.* But what if you don't have a dog? What can you do with some tennis balls?
Go grab some balls from the bushes behind the local tennis courts. Intercept a lobbed ball at the local dog park. Begin training as a Wimbledon ball-boy. Do whatever you need to do to get a hold of these magical golden orbs.
*According to small, panicky corners of the Internet, tennis balls may be bad for your dog's health. That fuzzy yellow coating might be ruining Fido's teeth. They're choking hazards for large dogs. They could randomly explode.
- Laundry? Yeah, tennis balls.
- Household cleaning? Yep.
- Parking? Got you covered.
- Sensual self-massage? You bet your felted fluorescent balls.
Go grab some balls from the bushes behind the local tennis courts. Intercept a lobbed ball at the local dog park. Begin training as a Wimbledon ball-boy. Do whatever you need to do to get a hold of these magical golden orbs.
*According to small, panicky corners of the Internet, tennis balls may be bad for your dog's health. That fuzzy yellow coating might be ruining Fido's teeth. They're choking hazards for large dogs. They could randomly explode.
Remove these ads by
Signing UpStep 1: Protect Your Floors
Refinishing a floor is a messy, time-consuming, and expensive task. It sucks, and you probably don't want to do it. I've done it professionally and it's not even fun when you're being paid for it.
Protect your precious floors by capping chair legs, walker feet*, and pirate pegs that might need to consistently slide or tap across your floor.
Just cut an X into the top of a tennis ball and insert the offending leg into the warm embrace of the tennis ball. Done.
*You've probably seen this trick at the local senior hang-out. Probably alongside a rousing game of shuffleboard or aqua-robics. Walker feet covered in tennis balls facilitate safe sliding and are easier to replace/cheaper than little rubber caps.
Protect your precious floors by capping chair legs, walker feet*, and pirate pegs that might need to consistently slide or tap across your floor.
Just cut an X into the top of a tennis ball and insert the offending leg into the warm embrace of the tennis ball. Done.
*You've probably seen this trick at the local senior hang-out. Probably alongside a rousing game of shuffleboard or aqua-robics. Walker feet covered in tennis balls facilitate safe sliding and are easier to replace/cheaper than little rubber caps.
Visit Our Store »
Go Pro Today »
For posting another use and a pic, have 3 months of pro membership.
Just had a brainstrom/squall/fart.
To make the tennis balls disappear when you don't need them, rig them with string to the top of your (automatic) garage door. Lead the string through eyelets directly above where they should hang. When the garage door goes up, the balls come down automatically—then disappear up toward the ceiling when the garage door goes back down.
Might be tough to get the heights exactly right. A knot or other obstruction on the string, just upstream of the ceiling eyelet, would limit travel and get the hood-height just right.
Good idea about the garage door.
When I tie a tennis ball for a vehicle position indicator, I thread the paracord through the tennis ball 3 times so that I have 4 cord "legs" 90 degrees apart and then tie it back to the line going to the ceiling on the top side of the ball. Some people just pull it through once and tie a knot in the cord at the bottom, but it would be too easy for someone to pull the ball off the line using that method, so I over-engineer it a bit.
(In lighter cases, marbles do the trick, but some of us need harsher measures.)
I once was playing tennis and upon finishing I went to my car to realize that I had locked my keys inside. I took a tennis ball and cut a quarter-sized hole into it. I placed the hole over my car door key-hole and hit the ball with my hand sending a burst of air into the key-hole and watched as my door lock popped up. I was in my car in seconds.
This worked every time on my 1999 Toyota 4runner, I have not tried it on any other vehicles.
Would you post a video of you doing this without someone in the background operating a remote? I'd love to see this proved possible (but see Mythbusters). If you post your address, perhaps some local 'ibles members could come over and test the idea while you're asleep (better leave the car somewhere accessible). : ]
I'm of the opinion that this is a really, really unlikely means of opening one's vehicle. But I'd love to see it actually work. Because I'd like a '99 4runner and happen to have a bunch of tennis balls on hand.
Is it possible that the air may temporarily line up the tumblers in the lock? Maybe. It's far from likely, given that equal air pressure across all of them would push them all the way out, then they would spring back in at the same rate.
What is absolutely impossible is that the gentle breeze that would have been generated by her pressing in on the ball (or a blast of 200 PSI from an air tank, for that matter) would rotate the lock mechanism the 45 to 90 degrees necessary for the linkage to be moved. I'm not sure what they claim having power locks does... a power lock system is exactly the same as a non-power lock. On older vehicles that had power locks as an option, the linkage, latch, lock cylinder, etc. are usually identical whether or not it had power locks. With power locks, there is usually one extra rod and an actuator, that snaps into a clip that is there on the one without power locks. The only difference is that the lock actuator adds drag on the linkage, making this more likely to work on something without power locks. Except you need the power locks to make this look real... a hand on the inside pulling up on the lock would make this a much more obvious fake.