I have a geode on my yoyo shelf and I found myself thinking about how cool it would be to have a crystal yoyo. Which got me wondering; Has anyone experimented with creating a yoyo out of say, glass or quartz? Something that could hold up to the spin, but fail spectacularly the first time it gets dinged…
I’m sure it would be exceedingly difficult to create something that would hold an axle well enough to not fly apart on the throw, let alone balance it well enough to even spin…
I think it really comes down to difficulty machining, weight and balance, and durability. I could maybe see selenite being used as far as stones go, but one hit on the floor and it’s most likely done for. Gold or silver could be used. Now that yoyo companies are putting out magnesium throws, we might see other materials offered.
Now personally I’ve seen magnesium fail and break on other machined projects so I’m passing on them.
I don’t think it gets much more fragile than a yoyo made out of pure ice. Made by none other than the mad engineer of yoyoing himself, Mr. B!st.
There’s been plenty of weird one off yoyos made out of glass and other materials. S.kon made a functional yoyo out of paper, and I’m sure a lot of the other modders of the past have made fragile but beautiful works. Maybe @yoyodoc has something cool to show off.
the throwdown lucha libre was not intended to be as fragile as it was. it was made of delrin, but nearly all of them failed. every so often one will pop up on the bst, i think @DapperWooona had one
Agreed, the other throwdown throws were so great. The luchadore was a beautiful throw for the time, easily one of the best comp throws using those sticker pads. So sharp!
Yeah, the Lucha libre unfortunately had very thinly machined walls in the response area–but still plays very fun
Landon Balk did an hourglass yoyo years ago. it was kind of fragile because it was was hollow all the way through.Some of the other all acrylics he did were kind of fragile but super awesome at the same time. FUNctional Hour Glass yoyo by 3YO3 - YouTube
There have been a couple yoyos made of actual glass one comes to mind is the Michah Evans one
There’s another glass yoyo out there that was actually playable, it was a sea-glass / old coke bottle / turquoise color. It was a flattened butterfly shape and super duper heavy on the string. I cannot for the life of me find a photo or video of it though!
Paper cup yoyo… lol nuff said. I’ve made a cardboard yoyo before it lasted 10 minutes and completely blew apart because the axle galled out the sidewall
One time when I was around 12, I poked a hole through two gatorade caps, used them as halves with the axle being a pencil worn down to almost where the eraser was. It was so fragile it just came apart after a few throws.
There’s the Efreet and the Randy Stiefel Fire YoYo, which are dangerous enough. Being made of glass would be asking for it to explode into a fireball. lol!
need to look into fireproof string