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."

Comments

TK created many innovations in the Yo-Yo industry

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Interesting facts:

[WegianWarrior]

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 ;)

Cool video - Japanese National Yo-Yo Contest

[ReKleSS]

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

Re:Yomega yoyos rock too, at a much better price

[Bingo Foo]

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.

The Freehand Isn't 400$

[Anonymous Coward]

The freehand described in the article is a special yo-yo based on a popular yo-yo that is much cheaper. Chillax.

See here.

Re:Pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Yoyo tricks and Diablo juggling

[Terri416]

The article mentions a form of yoyo trick where the yoyo leaves the string altogether and the tricks involve balancing the yoyo on the sting.

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.

Tom Kuhn deserves more credit

[cgenman]

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.