Is making a slappy stick efficient? No idea... I wanted to throw together a slappy stick and then try one without to see which approach was better, but getting a slappy stick solution took me so much time that I never got to try the other approach.

I got arms 1-8 working pretty quickly, but then the surgery on the stick took me a long time to wrap my head around. I ended up using arms 9 and 10 to alter the geometry of the stick which feels a bit like cheating (and costs an extra 10 instructions). This approach also ends up with an extra salt that needs to go on a trash stick. I think it might have been better to spend a few more instructions bulking up the stick from the start, having more atoms in the stick should makes it easier to manipulate. When it gets very thin it's hard to manipulate without arms because the same atom wants to be on a debonder to detach, but also on a bonder to reattach. Then I probably wouldn't need the disposal arm at the end, there would just be a giant trash stick.