How to determine the size of your acrobat?

I simply printed out Barry's plans and resized them for my ratio. I started out with the balls. His picture shows 9.5 mm balls and I wanted to use 12 mm balls. I proportioned everything up from the balls, that is, I multiplied everything by 1.26. The 12 mm balls will give quite a large figure, at least bigger than the German Garrett Wade version, but I thought it is easier to build a bigger one than a smaller one. Steel balls you can buy at any ball bearing shop and they are not expensive. Once the ratio is established, then you have to resize your plans and make templates. Obviously you could do it by a computer program, but I did it manually. In my design, the hips and shoulders are different than Barry's.

Make your templates and cut out the body parts: two sides for the torso, two arms and two legs.

For the tube, I finally settled with the electric thin-walled Bergmann pipe. Earlier, I experimented with felt and paper tubes. (I made tubes from felt and then paper.) They also worked fine.

The Bergmann pipes' outside diameter is approximately 15 mm and the inner diameter is 13.5 mm. It is impossible to measure accurately, because they are often flattened a bit. Later, instead of the 12 mm balls, I experimented with 12.7 and 13 mm balls. If the pipe is not flattened the 13 mm balls fit in nicely and with less play. Because of the less play and the heavier weight, they seem to give a better movement for the final figure. Finally, I changed almost all the balls to bigger ones.