I have a RAW surface yoyo,I made it very shiny at first by rubbing some metal polish on it, but then as I used it on a daily basis, perhaps my hands would produce some sweat making the sides of it not as shiny as they were at first.
This is what it looked like at first.
It doesn’t look as shiny now as it did before, but it’s still okay.
I think it’s already like that. Is there anything I can do to speed up the oxidation, although rubbing polish makes it shine, I feel like my thumb is going to break off at any moment after each rubbing, I saw someone on the forum who tried putting yoyo in Sprite, would this work? Post your suggestions, I need your help.
You probably should do some digging in “creating a patina” articles. But patined aluminium will look like an old stewpot
Why you polished your yoyo in the first place? Just to make it look pretty? Then you should polish it at regular basis and use cotton gloves while playing with it.
As you already discovered, raw yoyos are not really good for playing with bare hands, and this is why they are anodized in most cases.
Thanks for the reply, I’m off to dig up some history! The thing is, this yoyo was originally purchased by my friend from JK, it was a batch of Grail that had been put under his bed for a long time and probably originally looked like an old crock pot… but due to his poor storage, he put the yoyo with the eternal flowers and the eternal flowers corroded it! He thought polishing would remove that mark, so he polished the sides and when it came into my possession I polished the front and it is now presented to you as such.
Back in my motorcycle days I used Semichrome polish to shine the aluminum parts. It puts a very nice shine on aluminum with a little elbow grease.
You can then cover the aluminum with a very thin layer of clear coat. But that is optional. With my motorcycles, I just polished the aluminum every month or so and it stayed nice.
YMMV, fos1
.You said>
Is there anything I can do to speed up the oxidation?
What exactly are you trying to accomplish?
Just not sure what polishing a yo-yo and ‘speeding up oxidation have to do with each other in your dilemma?
I know a little about polishing things… but I would like you to clarify your goal?
We used Brasso to polish the SB2s back in the day. They would gleam, but of course get mucked up again after a while playing with them.