Introduction: How to a Thumbaround (and Impress Girls on Parties!)

We all remember this from school: The cool guys knew some nice tricks related to their pencils. This also caused some serious issues related with their grades, but this is not relevant for this instructable. I will teach you how to do a "thumbaround", this is the name of the trick that is basically "throwing the pencil around your finger and grab it again".

To start, you just need a pencil. Pros use a stick with some weights on both ends, buts its not necessary.

Step 1: Hold the Pencil

To start, just hold the pencil between your thumb and forefinger. You have to try a bit until you find out where you have to hold the pencil. Mostly, this is on the position shown on the second image, but depends on the weight distribution of your pencil.

Step 2: Disable Gravity

The theory is, that you give the pencial a soft "kickoff". This will disable gravity for a very short amount of time and the pencil can spin around your finger. Check out the images.

  • Immediately after you started the spinning process, move you forefinger away from the stick. You don't need your forefinger while the pen is spinning. Your forefinger is removed while your middle finger still pushes the stick.
  • Now your middlefinger and forefinger are moved down a bit. If you have held the pencil on a good position at start, it will spin like a charm!
  • Catch the pencil right when it spinned 360° by just pressing your middelfinger and forefinger towards your thum.

Its no magic, but you hav to train a coulple of times until you get routined.

Here is a video of me doing this trick:

Step 3: Tips and Tricks

To get a better result, the following tricks and tricks will help you:

  • If you are good, you can do this with everything. Starting from a TickTac to things like a water bottle or a remote control.
  • To train you should use a heavy stick with attached rubbers on very end