I came up with these little spinning doodads a few years ago around Christmas, and I haven't seen anything like them online, so I'm writing about them here as they are quite fun to make. I've just been calling these things "can spinners" (ChatGPT suggested "twirluminum").
They remind me a bit of candle carousels that I would see at my grandparents' house, but in this case they are cut from recycled aluminum soda cans and spin on sharpened tips of wire from the heat rising off the lamp.
I got my family to create their own this year and it was interesting to see the variety of designs they came up with (see the gallery below).
All the spinners shown above are made from sides and bottoms of recycled soda cans.
My process usually goes like this:
-
Sharpen pivot wire.
Sharpened bit of wire -
Cut out blank
-
Create the central dimple
Put your dimple at the center of mass -
Cut out blades and bend into shape.
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Trim and balance.
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Attach pivot wire to lamp
Incandescent bulbs work the best, but even LED bulbs are enough to get the spinners moving after warming up for a few minutes. After a few weeks of spinning, I've noticed the spinners made of thinner sidewall aluminum have very small pinholes from the pivot wire wearing through, but they haven't stopped spinning! The spinners made from can bottoms haven't had this problem yet.
