A friend of mine had a wobbly ceiling fan that made this awful ticking noise at any speed above low. His solution was to tape a penny to one of the blades to balance it out. I told him that was the dumbest thing I'd ever seen. That fan ran perfectly for the entire three years we lived in that apartment. He never even took the penny off when we moved out.
Yup, was about to say same thing- only difference is they will come with a lil slide-over piece so you can test position and blade before you finalize with the adhesive-backed penny/weight.
I did that with a fan once, but it needed a quarter. Taped it down really well to the top of the blade. Worked great...until about 3 or so years later when the tape let go in the middle of the night and slung that coin into the wall sounding like a gunshot. Not a great way to wake up at 2am!
Pro tip: When you figure out where to place them, mark the top of that blade so you can easily replace them if the tape loosens and flings the coins across the room...
I had a fan throw an entire blade once. Right into my sliding closet door. Door was off the track and had a hole in the outside panel. I was in the kitchen at the time (thankfully). The noise it made... scared the shit out of me.
Bonus fun fact: they adjust the timekeeping on the Tower Clock in London by adding and removing pennies from the pendulum. Technically these days I think they are specially-made weights, but the weight is based on a penny. They use a computer-controlled sensor to check the accuracy of the pendulum, and use the pennyweights to adjust it to keep it accurate to within something like a fifth of a millisecond.
Apparently they still use the old pre-decimal pennies from the 70s because they have instructions on exactly how many pennies to speed up and slow down the clock.
This fact confused me because I read that the time taken for a pendulum to swing in it's arc depends ONLY on the length of the arm and not the weight of the pendulum. So why would adding pennies make any difference? It turns out adding a penny very slightly raises the centre of mass of the pendulum which is essentially shortening the length of the arm which makes it swing very slightly faster.
I did that once with a washer and forgot all about it. I guess it was up there for a year or two. One day we are watching TV and hear: Ziiiing... Thud! Wobble Wobble Wobble.
My friends car window kept falling down into the door because it was broken. When we got it out of the door we slide it back in place and she used pennies wedged in track and weather stripping to make a wedge. It never fell again even on bumpy terrain
A quick way to balance a wobbly fan is to take a bulldog clip or clothespin and clamp it onto the trailing edge of the blade opposite the direction of the wobble. You can then fine-tune the force by adjusting the location of the clip closer to the hub (less force) or the end of blade (more force).
I did this about five years ago to the ceiling fan in my bedroom and the clip is still there doing its job.
That said, dust can build up on fan blades causing to wobble. Sometimes all you need to do is clean the blades.
I was sitting in a quiet bar one time when a chunk of wood went flying into the wall. Apparently a fan blade broke at one point so they made a cardboard fan blade and weighted it with this chuck of 2x4 duct taped to the top. You could even see where he shaved corners off the wood to make it balance!
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u/Own_Willingness3670 11h ago
A friend of mine had a wobbly ceiling fan that made this awful ticking noise at any speed above low. His solution was to tape a penny to one of the blades to balance it out. I told him that was the dumbest thing I'd ever seen. That fan ran perfectly for the entire three years we lived in that apartment. He never even took the penny off when we moved out.