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Extreme Yo-Yoing
Roland Piquepaille writes "Unless you're a dedicated yo-yo fan and a serious competitor, I doubt that you'll hand over $400 for a yo-yo. Even if it's a state-of-the-art hogh-tech yoyo made with a forged-magnesium-alloy and coming with the latest in axle technology. With this one, you can use the freehand style, meaning that your hand is not connected to the yo-yo, but is replaced by a small counterweight. In 'Reinventing the Yo-Yo,' Science News Online says 'its balance is ensured with precision tooling to micrometer tolerances by a computer-controlled lathe.' This long article doesn't solely focus on this luxury item. Instead, it looks at the history and the physics of the yo-yo, and includes many references. A good read for a weekend! This overview contains other details and extra references about the Freehand yo-yo."
The article is slightly mistaken, the Silver Bullet II (All metal yo-yo) and a number of other wooden TK Yo-Yos models had steel axles with replaceable ball bearings and a finely adjustable string gap based on a threaded inset that could be adjusted with a coin - this was the real innovation the adjustable string gap and it was the main innovation that they patented.
The ratcheting, telescoping and other means of trying to adjust the string gap were too imprecise and difficult to set and retain on a quickly moving high g-force yo-yo. An amazing amount of work and prototyping (years) went into that yo-yo and even though they patented aspects of it, other yo-yo companies went right ahead and copied the design and innovations. The Silver Bullets came in these cool anodized versions, too.
The yoyo is one of the oldest known toys. It's also not evolved from a weapon, country to popular myth.
All the stuff I know that is useless... I don't need no yoyo to prevent me from getting laid ;)
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
http://www.antra.dk/-- get the video here, down the bottom of the page. It's 60mb or so, but it's pretty amazing. Some of those guys have way too much time on their hands. (But here I am reading /., so......)
-ReK
md5sum -c reality.md5
reality: FAILED
md5sum: WARNING: 1 of 1 computed checksum did NOT match
As the owner of a Yomega Raider (~$10), a Spintastics (~$14), various Duncans (~$5), a few BC Spitfires (~$4), and a Custom Goldeneye (~$60), I can say that in metal-axle and ball bearing yoyos, you definitely get what you pay for. Duncans are not as good as yomega, for sure, but Yomega is not the top of the heap. I would look into an aluminum Custom, IIWY.
In wood-axle yoyos, you can get an amazing amount of play for cheap. The BC spitfire is still my favorite looper. I also found an unlabeled black wood saber-shape (with wooden transaxle) at a liquidation sale for $5, that rivaled the Spintastics for sleep time.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
The freehand described in the article is a special yo-yo based on a popular yo-yo that is much cheaper. Chillax.
See here.
well, hmm. $400 for a yoyo is the most ive ever seen for a non-vintage yoyo. i think the next one was something like 150... Anyway, I jsut looked in my bag of yoyos (i used to be a competitive yoyoer... now i do it occasionally for fun) and I see a duncan freehand that doesnt look like the picture and cost about 15 bucks. this is the first yoyo ive seen that was designed for freehand use, but not even close to the first one used for that. This one i have might just be an earlier version, seeing as how it's made of plastic and all, but i think it's wrong to claim this as the first yoyo that you dont need to attach to your hand. Even older is the "off-string" style where the string is attached to your finger, but not to the yoyo. in this method, one throws the yoyo into the air, and catches it on the string, going on to perform one of several tricks. Either way, the most i ever paid for a yoyo was 45 bucks for an aluminum yoyo. excellent quality, but still... still, I dont know anyone in who would throw something so expensive around on a string, while not attached to your hand, that could be permanantly broken if you drop it. With a normal yoyo, at least it's attached to the thrower's finger, but this... it would make me nervous. oh, one more thing. about yomega, they make decent yoyos, and I learned on a yomega fireball, then a saberwing fireball (fireballs use a transaxle system, which is like a ring around the axel tied to the string, and the saber wing means it's a butterfly shape), but after learning, I have come to realize that there are much better yoyos availabe imho. I use a pro-yo "Stunt Pilot" for all my yoyoing these days. it's great to use, and it beats any yomega or duncan ive had the oppertunity to use.
If I could rearrange the keyboard, I'd put U and I together.
You can (and many people do) make any old yoyo into a freehand with a little weighted fob looped at the end of the string. A six-sided die drilled through the center is the canonical example.
This reminds me of diablo juggling. Think of a whacking great yoyo, about 8 inches diameter, and a 4 foot long string attached to 2 sticks. Loop the string around the diablo and move the string side to side rapidly to spin it up, then unloop the string and the tricks commence. Experienced performers can use a few diablos at once. I found some video here.
www.yoyojam.com
YoyoJam makes good yo-yo's from 15 -> 40 dollars.
Which will probably have just as good performance and www.yoyoing.com is a great resource for news on things such as this...
Before putting the string on the yoyo, you loop the string through a counterweight (a die or a little superball are common and come with the Freehand yoyos that Duncan sells) then through the loop you normally use to make a slipknot for your finger. Then you attach the string to the yoyo as normal, and you're left with a yoyo and one end and a weight on the other.
The advantage is, obviously, that the yoyo and string are no longer attached to you, which allows you to do lots of unusual tricks. As a simple example, you can let go of everything, put a finger in the middle portion of the string, and do small circles with it to get the yoyo and weight both spinning around in circles. The disadvantages are that you can no longer do some normal tricks, others become much harder, and it's a more difficult style to get accustomed to.
For anyone who's interested, here's another nice vid that's a bit newer.
The article credits Tom Kuhn with the Silver Bullet 2, the first production yo-yo with a ball-bearing axle, but they don't truly give the man his due credit. He is also the creator of the world's largest functional yoyo, and the first yoyo you can disassemble. The article mentions that gap width is now adjustable, but doesn't mention that Tom Kuhn was the first person to do that (in the aformentioned SB2, nonetheless). His Silver Bullet 1 was the first yo-yo weighted out the outside, and the first manufactured from aircraft aluminum. Basically, he defined state-of-the-art for yo-yos up until the mid 90's, when his business started having problems (his San Fransisco shop closed down, sadly).
If you are doing an article on bringing the YoYo from the 1950's fad to the mid 90's high-performance device, Tom deserves a lot of credit. He doesn't have the revolutionary influence that he once did, but that's like saying Chuck Barry doesn't have the influence that he once did. Both defined where we are today, and their industries would be tremendously different without them.
The ______ Agenda
Seriously, finding the right combination of string, loop tightness, gumming agents, and time will teach you a lot about what your yo-yo is actually doing. I used to create yoyo strings from kite string for the other kids in the neighborhood. I started with a traditional yoyo weight cotton fiber kite string, would soak it in water for several minutes, and then would twist it to a 4 foot length (slightly longer than usual). Then I would dry it slightly, coat it in honey, and leave it outside overnight. In the morning, a quick spray of hairspray would add even more to the tackyness, and the string would be ready to go. Metal cores would chew through the string like knives through butter, but maple axles would have significantly improved spin times. You would have to wind it a little more tightly than normal to wake it up at all, but improved sleep times were far more valuable than a somewhat groggy wake. Besides, if you caught it in free-flight it woke up without problem.
The ______ Agenda
I sprung for a ProYo Cold Fusion (about $120) when it came out. I was shocked at its performance- I could easily make it sleep for up to 3 minutes right out of the box. Once the berings broke in, 4 to 5 minutes was not uncommon. It has the world record at the time, I think something like 7 minutes and change. I've heard of unofficial times approaching 10 minutes. This thing could do tricks that were up the then impossible on other yoyos.
That said, $120 is a good deal of money to drop on a yoyo. Unless you are really serious about your tricks, you are better of with something like a Team Losi Cherry Bomb, of which you can buy about 8 for the same price of the Cold Fusion. I do not yoyo as much as I did a few years back, but I'd love to take this new one for a spin (pardon the pun) to see what it is capable of.
As in the car world, you usually get what you pay for, in terms of performance and prestige. Cheap Duncans are like used Yugos, they might get you where you need to go, but not much else. Cold Fusions, and this new Freehand Mg are like the Lamborghinis and McLarens - you get killer performance, drop-dead style - but you pay the price.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
If you'd read the article (hell, even the Slashdot blub!), you'd see that the $400 yo-yo has not yet been released. The $16 one you found is an example of the first model utilizing the design of a counterweight, which the $400 not-yet-released model also uses.