John Bain of Wilmington, a continuing education student leaning toward a major in communication, thinks getting into the Guinness Book of World Records will be a snap. He plans to get there by assembling the world’s largest ball made out of rubber bands.
By mid-November, Bain had assembled a ball measuring 12 feet in diameter and weighing 1,400 pounds. That would have beaten the current rubber-band ball record-holder–Steve Partridge of Gildford, England, who constructed a 1,022-pound ball–but Bain’s goal was to get the weight of his ball up to 1,500 pounds, which he estimated would happen sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
It all started last summer when Bain tied a knot in a rubber band at his job in the mail room of a Wilmington, Del., law firm. "I’m one of those people who want to be famous," he says, adding that he once considered creating the world’s longest chain of paper clips, but dropped the idea because of the expense.
He has offset the cost of his rubber-band ball in some very creative ways. The large rubber bands he needs for the outer layers, for example, are supplied by Alliance Rubber of Hot Springs, Ark. He has found a tow truck driver who volunteered to transport the completed ball to the Metler Scale Co. near Claymont, Del., where certified employees will record its official weight, as required by Guinness.
Bain’s already appeared on several area television shows and been the subject of newspaper articles. When his rubber-band ball is finished, he may see if David Letterman will drop it from a crane to see how high it will bounce. If that happens and it survives, he may donate it to a museum.