My slow process of bringing my old collection out into the light once again means that I am cleaning and performing maintenance on some old objects. Quite a few pushing a quarter of a century. And some of them… they haven’t made it
Both a Team Losi Cherry Bomb and a Yomega X-Brain have crumbled at the same point where the axle mounts into the body. With the former has genuinely fallen to pieces, the latter has simply sheared apart. Oddly they utilise quite different plastics - the Losi quite soft and waxy, the Yomega hard and brittle. Neither were caused by impact or other abuses.
Be warned out there. Those old treasures do not last forever. I now worry for my other throws of similar vintage.
My metal yoyos will outlive me, and they are the ones that matter (to me) the most. By the time my 2A and 4A throws crumble apart, yoyo design will have undoubtedly improved and I won’t mourn their loss anyway.
I think I could bring that Cherry Bomb back to life! Something people do not realize though is polycarbonate plastics have a shelf life, about 20 years. They slowly become brittle over time. It’s depressing to think about, but nothing lasts forever is true.
I was sitting in my office one day and literary heard a fh1 shatter on the shelf. It was from really late in the tools life but it just exploded on the shelf. RIP.
I have a yo-yo collection within a yo-yo collection.
One part of my entire collection consists of literally hundreds and hundreds of yo-yos.
The other part of the collection consists of entire yo-yo bags full of cracked yo-yos.
I would say at least 80 percent of ALL my Yoyojam yo-yos are cracked. I have at least a few dozen of my own signature: Motrix, Motu and Micro-Mo yo-yos that are Ka-rack’T.
I have an Entire Yomega bag full of the heavy gravity yo-yos that are cracked.
I have Motu’s that were never released…. Plastic body and Titanium rings. Rings are fine…. Bodies are toast. I’m thinking of machining some delrin bodies to salvage the Ti rims.
I have a few Matadors that literally disintegrated.
I have one of the fairly rare ‘long spinning’ yo-yos. I don’t know how many there are or at least were, but mine is toast, sadly.
Am I mad about it? No…… I have no thoughts whatsoever that Dale knew his yo-yos were going to self destruct over time. I don’t believe ‘anybody’ had a serious clue what the effective service life of these yo-yos would be. Yoyojam shook stuff up in a good way over a period of years. And the legacy of what they contributed to yo-yos is far more important than their yo-yos eventually falling apart.
I’ve been there. Not just plastic either. This is why I rarely coddle a yoyo. I prefer to enjoy the hell out of it while I can. I don’t go out of my way to be careless or anything like that but I really try to keep it in the carefree realm when it comes to how long it lasts.
Despite these efforts, it can sting though. I am sorry for your losses!
Does this thread only apply to old plastic yo-yo’s? The title of the thread is “Nothing lasts forever” but I am curious; is there any long-term degeneration of material;s associated with anodized aluminum? Why would an aluminum yo-yo not last forever?
Well there’s another thread about a turned wooden yoyo simply ceasing to work as the wood just gets polished into ineffectiveness. I imagine some designs might fail in other, curious ways too. Global warming might yet see our aluminium throws melting but I imagine we’d have a different set of issues before then.
For long-term storage, might it help to have a touch of silicone grease or DOW 33 on the axle threads to prevent them from getting sticky? It wouldn’t stop the plastic from degrading but would limit the stress from unscrewing the yoyo.
I am, by profession and by inclination, an engineer. Unlubricated threads (and bearings) make me twitch. So all of my throws have a light but appropriate application of something.
Oof well lets RIP my kickside lyn furry 2 FH2 a Renegade and saddest of all the avenger modded hitman with an avenger mod.
I’m hard on stuff and i feel bad.
Interesting second thought for the string makers. Thread is not imortal. I had 3 cones ready to fade to dust. In my showcase thread I made a post about hundreds of strings I salvaged. The thread lasts, but plastic fades over time. I have plastic chips all over my work station. 250 strings added to my holdings though.
Many of YoyoJam’s early output was plagued by cracking even early in their lives. Often this was centred on the axle and was attributed to over tightening. It wasn’t that… or at least it wasn’t always and only that.
These seem largely as I remember them; cracked but keeping it together for now. Which is about all that we collectively can aspire to these days.
