Beginning a Dark Magic Modification- Help!

Yo-Yo Mods and Maintenance
1

Hey guys. There’s one area of yoyoing that is not my strong suit- modding. Ask me anything else and you’ll probably get an answer but modding is a world unknown to me.

I have a Dark Magic (the first one). It was my first real yoyo, so as you can imagine, the metal rims on the thing are beat to crap dented 100% all the way around the metal rims.

Well when I was a noob, being the nooby person that I was I decided to sand down the rims after I had aquired more throws and started denting my yoyos less and less. Well alot of you know that when sanding you have to be careful not to leave the metal surface uneven or sand it unequally or the yoyo will get vibe. Stupidly, I did not research this before I did it. I sanded down the rims until most of the dents were gone and now there’s just a few indentations in the rims. (Also took the caps off btw)

Well, now its about two years later and I picked up my DM again and now I want to mod it. The rims actually lookk pretty good although I want it free of dents and it’s actually almost to that point after on-again off again sanding. I put in a Center-trac in the thing and thankfully it’s vibe free (as far as I can tell). The thing actually plays freakin good, not going to lie. I would like to completely mod it though.

Here’s what I know you can do- put in shims to widen the gap to make it less responsive, replace the o-ring with silicone, new bearing and sand and polish the rims. But I do have a few questions-

  1. How could I further sand down the rims on the DM without giving it vibe?
  2. I’ve heard YYJ shims wear down or something like that. Is this true?
  3. I see all these beautiful stunning polish jobs and my sanding just doesn’t give it that look… Polishing: does this mean sanding it down or using a type of liquid cleaner to polish it? Or both?
  4. If it’s the liquid thing, how long approximately does it stay polished? What type should I use?
  5. Is there anything more I can do to maximize the play of the yoyo after everything I said?

Thank you for reading this and addressing my questions.
Concerns? Thoughts?

2

  1. If your using a lathe or a drill press, or something else like that, it shouldn’t give it vibe to sand it, if you do it evenly. What grit sandpaper do you use?

  2. After a time, shims wear down, fact of life.

  3. Both, sorta, if you want to. Grit of sandpaper has a great effect, so does the time you hold the sandpaper on for, It’s preference what grit you want to use, just takes time, I like to use 220 wet, to remove dings, go up to 320 wet, then to 400, then to 600, I need 800, haven’t used it yes, not fully needed, preference, like I said earlier, then I move on to 1500, that’s all I need, you can use Mother’s compound, I haven’t got any yet though.

  4. Oops, Mothers compound it highly recommend. I actually don’t know how long it will stay polished. Sorry about that.

  5. It’s a pretty darn good yoyo, you could get it blasted to grind better, or you could get it reshaped, you decision.

Hope I helped. :slight_smile:

1 Like
3

Unless you get rid of the starburst side and replace it with a silicone recess

4

What. haha

5

I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ve heard people use autosol to polish a throw. You can buy it at auto stores. Any car/metal polish should work though :smiley:

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  1. Put it on a drill or lathe and use 200 grit sandpaper.
  2. only if you screw it together really tight. They’re fiberboard. Not going to last forever.
  3. Sand the rims in this order 400, 600, 1000, 1500, metal polish.
  4. It’ll stay mirror like for about a week. After that, the oxide layer builds up.
  5. About all you could do would be satin the IRG. Silicone one side and recess the other. You could also schmoove it.
7

What he means is you remove the starburst side of the response and cut a groove for silicone.

As to using a drill press for sanding, be careful w/that. You can do that with yoyos that have a through axle like the Duncan FHZ etc, or a full metal yoyo with a good, solid axle thread. The axle nut in the original DM, and most other older YYJ models, is a brass insert pressed into the plastic shell. If you stress it too much trying to sand the rims you stand a good chance of knocking it out of whack or breaking it out completely.

8

Mount the Dark Magic on a drill and do basically the same as this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlCPzagEINc&feature=related