Making A Shuriken Fidget Spinner Fun & Interesting

By definition, these toys do not serve much of a real purpose. But they are highly fashionable right now, so I thought it would be interesting to make a pair and possibly cash in on that popularity. I’m not above doing something just because it might get a lot of views.

And since I was doing one, I figured may as well double the fun and make another from a different material. The first is made from 1/4″ steel plate left over from making my wood burning BBQ grill:

making a shuriken fidget spinner from steel and wood

Hefty material, but these spinners need mass to stay spinning, especially with an ordinary sealed bearing. Besides that, it will be a replica ninja star, so the extra weight won’t hurt.
I found the bearing I had was too stiff to get any kind of good spin going, so I soaked it in paint thinner to clean out the heavy grease. I should have removed the rubber seal to speed that up, but it came out fine in the end.

The shape is a five pointed star, and I laid that out in the classic way using a compass and straightedge:

making a shuriken fidget spinner from steel and wood

I drew the layout lines in pencil, then the lines that define the star shape with a fine marker to see them better.

Next, I drilled the holes. Five smaller ones around the middle and the big one for the bearing. I used a large step drill to make the big hole. It could also be done by drilling a series of smaller holes in a circle, punching out the centre and filing it to the exact size:

making a shuriken fidget spinner from steel and wood

I could then cut out the star itself using the angle grinder:

making a shuriken fidget spinner from steel and wood

Then it was over to my homemade belt grinder to do the major shaping.

The final step was to glue in the bearing using super glue. The bearing is slightly thicker than the steel, so I spaced the star up off the table with small washers to better centre it:

making a shuriken fidget spinner from steel and wood

The pencil with tape wrapped around it is the installation tool, letting me lower the bearing into the hole without touching it.

Finished:

making a shuriken fidget spinner from steel and wood

I intentionally left it rough looking. I thought that would look more authentic and less fake than something highly polished.

I repeated the process in wood, using a piece of steamed cherry:

making a shuriken fidget spinner from steel and wood

To be honest, it took less time to make the metal version. I had to be extra careful with the cherry one while working on it. It’s a hardwood, but certainly not as hard as steel, and at this size quite fragile to work with:

Here’s the video on making the steel version. Warning, this one has music that you may not like and was done in a very stylistic way. If you’d prefer one with just shop sounds (but still no narration) I uploaded another version to my scrap bin channel and that video is here:

Here’s the wood version. This video is more traditional and has narration: