A rubber band ball is a bouncy ball made by tying rubber bands into a knot or folding a single larger band and then wrapping or twisting more rubber bands around it until the desired size is achieved. Some people speed the process by starting with a core of wadded paper or a rubber ball (such as a superball). However, some people consider this cheating. In the rubber band ball building community it is generally accepted that the ball should be made purely out of rubber bands.
There are many techniques to building a rubber band ball and their "style" can be as varied as their creators. The main challenge when building a large rubber band ball, is to find increasingly larger bands to accommodate the ball as its circumference grows. Others will chain smaller bands together and wrap them onto the ball. This technique is not widely accepted in the ball building community and is looked upon as cheating by some since it allows one to build weight faster than with conventional methods. When larger bands aren't available, or when the ball is being built solely from donated bands, you may have no other options. In either case as long as it is 100% rubber bands, it is still a rubber band ball. Another challenge when building a large ball, is that it gets increasingly difficult to keep round the larger it gets, and new techniques for band placement may be necessary. The main statistic about one's rubber band ball that ball builders measure by is weight, probably influenced by the fact that Guinness holds the record by weight alone. Measuring its circumference is another way to measure your progress when a scale isn't handy.
Rubber band ball building has been greatly influenced and brought into the fore, by John Bain a previous multiple year Guinness world record holder as well as many others who have taken the time to dedicate websites and postings about this fun and stress relieving hobby.
The world's largest rubber band ball was created by Joel Waul. He is the current World Record Holder according the Guinness World Records. The ball, which sits under a tarp in Waul's driveway, is 9,032 pounds, and more than six-feet tall and more than 700,000 rubber bands. It set the world record on November 13, 2008 in Lauderhill, Florida.
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