I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I don’t think there’s an ano job that I don’t know how to execute… rather some ano jobs would be really difficult to execute well from a technical/craft perspective. At it’s core, all anodizing is basically just dyeing, masking, layering more dye, etc. You could do almost anything using these techniques, it just gets really really hard to do well. As the designs get more complicated and you add more layers, you are forced to handle the yoyo more. This is what results in ano flaws.
To back up a little bit… once you anodize a yoyo, you can’t touch it with your hands, because the oils from your hands prevent the dye from coloring the yoyo. (Even handling the yoyo with gloves can result in flaws. Flaws show up as either a raw or light spot where the color should be solid.) A yoyo like the captain america chief requires very precise stencils all on a solid red background which is extremely difficult to execute properly. I screwed up many times before successfully completing the 6 or 7 ones that I finished. I was hunched over a desk, using needles and tweezers to perfectly drop a centered star on the CLYW Chief hub, all without touching the yoyo at all. If the stencil sticks to the wrong spot, the yoyo is ruined and you need to start over. If you accidentally brush the yoyo while trying to lay the stencil, it’s ruined. If the stencil is statically charged and ‘jumps’ to the surface of the yoyo, it’s ruined.
This is why anodizers do a lot of splashes on either silver or acid wash backgrounds… you can’t tell where the ano flaws are because you can just bleach it our or acid wash over it and the buyer would never know there is a flaw under there. (I think I just revealed an anodizer trade secret. :P)
This is why black skittles (right) is harder than silver skittles (left). This is also why you very rarely see anodizers doing color stencils. (Silver stencils are typically just laser engravings on top of ano.)
