Yes, scrapping the yoyo meant washing the yoyo, stripping it own to raw and trying again. Those are the moments where you get so frustrated you want to chuck the yoyo across the garage, lol.
Anodizing a raw several times does have a physical impact although it’s probably unnoticeable for the first 2-3 times. Every time you strip a yoyo you take off a bit of the metal, so if you keep stripping then you’re literally shaving off micro layers of the yoyo. For practical purposes this isn’t a huge deal, but becomes to be noticeable in the tightness of the screw axle to the yoyo halves.
Also stripping is not a perfect process and sometimes it’ll strip unevenly or if you didn’t get all the masking off, you’ll need to strip twice. Stripping a 95% perfect yoyo is not fun and emotionally exhausting. Sometimes I’d have to put a project down and come back days later because it was so frustrating.
If you’re a manufacturer and supply of yoyo halves isn’t a huge burden then you can just sell the flawed yoyos off as B-Grade or NQP, etc… But because I was anodizing people’s personal yoyos or getting small batches from manufacturers, I didn’t have that luxury… plus I always wanted my work to be perfect.
Have you ever attempted to create a swirl-like pattern on a yo-yo, and what do you think of the process? Speaking as someone who knows very little about anodizing yo-yos, that pattern looks very intricate and difficult to pull off.
First of all, thank you for doing this! I really appreciate this discussion. I enjoy knowing and understanding how things work.
I have a few questions but I’ll start with one:
How are the different textures achieved? I’m thinking of “bead blast” and others like it [non glossy]. Is it a chemical process, or is it a physical tumbling in a media? Or is it something else altogether?
There are a few different type of swirls, the ones I posted are harder to get right because they use a different type of technique and special dyes. Other swirls you might see that look more like a spinning paint brush are done exactly as you might think… namely they are mounted on a drill or other spinning mechanisms and then you just paint the mask on to the yoyo using a brush. Just like you might swirl paint a vase on a potter’s wheel.
Texturing a yoyo is typically a physical process that is done before anodizing. One starts with a raw yoyo which will already have a ‘texture’ to it, given to it by the machining process. Depending on the machining process this could vary, but it’s typically just smooth raw, unpolished aluminum. From there, you can do a few things:
Mirror Polish: You can polish the yoyos and take them from dull smooth raw to near mirror finish using a combination of fine grit sandpaper and steel wool.
Tumbling: Using a commercial tumbler and a variety of different tumbling media, you can get different finishes that are more refined/consistent than a raw finish. OneDrop’s pyramatte is a tumble finish.
Blasting: As @TeeJay notes, blasting is the process of using a blasting cabinet in combination with an air compressor to shoot abrasive particles at the raw yoyo to give it a particular finish. Different grades of blast media and types of blast media impart different finishes on the raw aluminum. Too aggressive blast media will result in a sparkly, rough feeling yoyo that will cut string, while softer media will give more of a matte finish. Ernie from General Yo does his own blasting (or at least used to).
Now, you could use chemicals to impart texture to a yoyo, but I don’t think this is typically done because the chemical processes are not uniform. E.g.: You could soak a raw yoyo in stripper for a long time and you’d end up with a texture with pitting… but it’s probably not very desirable.
To my knowledge, most mass produced yoyos are either just machine raw, tumbled in some media or blasted. When I was doing anodizing commission jobs, I would chemically strip them which would remove the ano/color but leave the texture.
Stripping always very slightly modifies the texture since you’re removing a layer of aluminum from the yoyo… Most of the time you wouldn’t notice the difference much though.
Thank you! This one was definitely one of the hardest yoyos I have anodized, along with the Captain America Chief. The difficulty was in lining up the stencils perfectly straight and then for a few of the invaders, having to lay down individual pixels very precisely, all without touching the yoyo.
For the Space Invaders, each half is anodized only once… then it is dyed/masked each time for each color. So for the defender on the bottom half, it was dyed orange, then masked, then bleached, then dyed black, then sealed.
For the top half with the invaders, after creating the stencils:
I dyed yellow, masked, bleached.
Dyed green masked, bleached.
Dyed pink, masked, bleached.
Dyed blue, masked, bleached
Dyed black.
Remove all masks.
Pray.
Carefully observe for ano flaws, proper color saturation, etc… then sealed.
Bleaching! I had no idea that a yoyo could be bleached during the anodizing process! What kind of chemical is used for that? It’s not bleach, is it? Haha
And what about the sealing process? Is there a specific chemical used for that as well?
Yes, a lot of bleach is used during anodizing. This is why one really needs to study anodizing before messing with it. You are handling high voltage electricity, buckets of bleach, acid, dye and boiling water all at the same time. The order and handling of everything is not only critical to the anodizing results, but to your health as well. Accidentally mixing bleach and acid creates chlorine gas which can literally kill you. (Chlorine gas was used as a chemical weapon in World War I. )
There were one or two times when I was working and didn’t have enough ventilation and cross contaminated some of my solutions. The result was a noxious gas that made me light headed; there is serious risk to your health if you’re not careful.
This is why I’m happy to answer general questions about anodizing on this forum, but if you’re an aspiring anodizer you should study the process and learn from anodizing websites or books.
For sealing, you just boil the yoyo after you’re done removing all the masking. This locks the colorway in permanently. You can use commercial sealant for better results.
I recall that maybe I tweaked the volt/amp/time a tiny bit for the anodizing bath, but it’s not really any different than standard aluminum. (I have the details in my anodizing notes somewhere.)
See above thread for a great guide… One comment, polishing titanium is much harder than polishing aluminum. Similar process but takes forever. I don’t recommend trying it unless you’re really dedicated to spending hours on it and have worked on aluminum first.
Thanks but as I mentioned, my anodizing setup is packed away and I’m not in it for making money. I just do it for the challenge and the art/fun, sort of like painting or drawing.
I will probably anodize again, but when I do I’ll do one off pieces for myself or sell them off. I’ll be focusing on intricate and complex designs, stuff that the commercial anodizers wouldn’t do because it’s too time consuming.
