SPYY + CLYW = the yoyo I want to make for myself

General Yo-Yo
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TLDR: I want to try and synthesize a yoyo inspired by older CLYW & SPYY at a membership workshop by my house that offers shop lessons for myself and the members of Cincinnati yoyo club. Anyone have advice with this? What unforseen obstacles have you run into making your yoyos? What qualities do you ascribe to either or both CLYW & SPYY?

CONTEXT: I am an okay player. I have fun messing around at a brewery twice a month with my yoyo peeps. I hate video editing. I want to do more than hit my head against a wall trying to make a cool yoyo trick and subsequent video to showcase it. You can only switch 1A thru 5A to keep things fresh for so long
 and yet i feel stale. So Instead of smashing my head into a talent ceiling once more, I have turned my eyes towards making them and understanding design.

Looking back to understand my own favorite yoyos, I posit a case study between fun and performance, between marketing and machining, between good yoyos and other good yoyos, and its the two canadian ones that both have four letter acronym: SPYY & CLYW. Disclaimer: This is a personal reflection at this point and only opinion follows, I do not claim to know anything absolute about these, i dont know Chris or Steve personally (or really anyone else involved with either of the two) and i only want discussion to say positivie things about them, not to criticize them unfairly.

This is also about these brands in the past decade as CLYW looks way different than when i started around 2010. SPYY doesnt even make yoyos anymore, and now i freak out whenever something cool pops up on Ebay and i wish i had a million dollars so i could buy all of them. Each team had such amazing talent to showcase the products, my favorites to this day, but now i am rambling again.

CLYW was a big favorite as a teenager
 but strangely without even owning one of their yoyos. This was because of how FUN they looked and of course their team made cool videos. These yoyos LOOKED like toys still, even though i knew they were hundreds of dollars. (I also still want a stuffed gnarwhal
) The things that stuck out to me (and this sounds silly) but how round they were. Yes, i know, every yoyo is a circle from the side, but the curved profile and hub nipples made them look
 friendly? Its the difference between a Gibson Les Paul and a Gibson SG, of which i relate Saturn Prescision to moreso.

SPYY yoyos were my absolute favorite- the shape, the laser engraving, the “grown up” feel of the yoyos- but also felt like somehting closer to a prescision crafted aircraft part at times and not so much like a toy. Felt like a F1 racecar instrument. The machining also is more intricate:

How did Steve do the side caps on the PURE?
How did Steve do the rim engraving on the pistolero and ranchero?
How did Steve do the milling on the RSL?
etc. etc. etc
 ad infinitum


Wish i could ask for lessons or something from him or other accomplished machinists, but from what i gather this level of machinist skils boarders on sorcery and witchcraft
 next best is teaching myself with the mk1 mechanics series, yoyozeitgeist, and yoyo design 101 on youtube and messing with free CAD software. For now nayways.

My goal for the next two months or so is to get a game plan together to pursue this and find out the viability of something like this. The “How to run a botique yoyo busniess” stes up a lot of good framework for decisding what you want your prject to be: anywhere from Duncan and Yoyofactory that churn out massive volume of yoyos, or just a casual small side gig that makies some small money on the side. I want to be the later. To start, though, I found a place by my house that offers shop classes and had lathes and CNC milling equipment among other things and lessons. I just need to march in there with my SPYY Ronin and ask them “How do i make something like this?” because its hard to describe what i want over phone
 but also theyre old farts and havent responded to my other questions on email and phone messages.

In conclusion, my hope for 2025 is to learn to make a yoyo. A yoyo that plays like my favorites. Performance from SPYY and the casual fun from older CLYW (not disrespecting any current models of course, my Gorge & Ditch set is plenty fun). This is an impossible task as both are completely dependant upon the thrower, but maybe undertaking this task bound to fail will deepen my somewhat intimate knowledge of spinny things and maybe make something fun for others. I know to make money the market tends towards competitive models, and thats fun, but i want to make yoyos for those who dont compete, for those who dont film tutorials. For guys like me who putz around and enjoy collecting them and throwing them back and forth and that makes us happy.

-Joe Schmo

(Future possible maker of Schmo-Yo yoyos, maybe one day hopefully)

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Well
 as far as inspiration goes you could do a lot worse! Good luck!

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I feel like Schmo-Yo and Throw-Yo need to do a collab.

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“Each Schmo-Yo purchase comes with 1 custom made Throw-Yo string!”

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For machining advice, I’d recommend DMing @Lotaxi. He’s a professional machinist (who has recently gotten into yo-yo design/machining) so may be able to give you some help there.

The main thing that you’ll need to keep in mind I think (speaking as a relative layman) is that your bearing seat will need to have very tight tolerances.

As far as old school CLYW/SPYY design elements, I think a couple pieces of design language that stand out to me from them are:

  • CLYWs tended to have axle posts in the cup, maybe with a small spike.
  • CLYW of course brought the double rim about with the Chief
  • SPYYs I remember often/always having pretty sharp spikes (often very large ones) in their cups.

Perhaps you could design something with a CLYW-esque profile and a SPYY-esque cup with an intimidating spike (or you could do the reverse). This approach to combining two brands’ design language has been used on quite a few official brand collabs after all (see LFVK x CLYW Tundra, OD x CLYW Summit, and I’m sure there are other examples).

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If you need cad help, feel free to hit me up.

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I’m absolutely available to help you understand the manufacturing side of things. My own process is different than the larger manufacturers, but I understand what they do. Toss questions at me and I’ll do my best to help you out.

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Allow me to introduce my latest 3d printed fixed axle yo-yos just to contradict this statement

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Need a button heart

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I’mma post up the files later today so you can print one. Will update in the 3d printing thread.

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Thank you, I appreciate the kind words genuinely.

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Hell yeah man, if I ever produce anything physical I will put some Throw Yo string on it :sunglasses:

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I will definitely hit you up, I really appreciate the help and humbled by the online community! I think right now my plan is to walk into this place ( https://themanufactory.us/ ) with a case of yoyos and just ask them “Can I learn to make these here?” And then hopefully learn in person.

What are some things someone may not have considered when taking up a project? Were there any unexpected things someone considering taking up this project should consider?
If you could go back in time to when you only had an idea and nothing physical yet, what would you tell yourself?

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So far I am just compiling a list of actual characteristics I love about these yoyos and narrowing it down, because just saying you like everything a brand puts out is too big and vague to tease out any good ideas. I love the huge matador spikes like you said, and love anything with a huge honkin’ spike in it.

The Galactic Goose is one of my grails but I never seem to have the money when one of those go up for purchase lol but ALL the collabs are amazing the last decade, I can’t think of one I wasn’t excited about.

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Producing something like this intrigues me, most of the footage out there of people making yoyos is just a lathe. I wanna see how they made the holes lol!

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all those holes on the pistolero were drilled by hand if not mistaken

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@DocPop ’s Icarus is a more recent yo-yo with holes.

TBH, I never really thought about how that was incorporated into the production.

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Absolutely. I saw the same thing when I got into this a few months back. The amount of help people are willing to throw my way was and is incredible.

You might also think about looking around for a community college that has some kind of machining or manufacturing course. Understanding tolerances and geometric condition will be pretty important for this kind of thing.

Ideally they’ll do this kind of thing on a Mill-turn machine. It’s a lathe that also has rotating tools independent of the spindle. You can mount drills on them and cut holes that aren’t coaxial with the part’s rotation. They’re pretty cool, but crazy expensive. I really want one lol

Typically the big thing that I see people run into from a general manufacturing standpoint is that they go all-in on a physical model first thing. They want to hold it in their hands and they don’t care if it’s terrible or if it’s not gonna work. There’s something to be said for that, and it’s really cool to hold something you designed from the ground up, but I would highly recommend peer review. Don’t cut the first iteration, cut iteration 2 or 3 after people have torn your design apart and you’ve made alterations based on the feedback.

Machining in low quantity will be expensive. Like way more expensive than you might expect if you’ve never encountered stuff before. The low costs of many general yoyos are low because the company orders a lot of them at once and the up front costs are distributed between all the final units. When you’re getting into this, be prepared for the cost.

To give some perspective, before I cut my first design I had to sink almost 1000$ into nothing but tools. Most of the things I bought were used, surplus, bought at auction, or otherwise scrounged up, but if I had been forced to go for retail I likely would have spent 5000-6000$ or so. And then I only made one unit. Material costs are rising as well, though there’s nothing wrong with recycled material if you can find a source to trust.

Have fun with the design process. Take more experienced advice that you think will make the final product fun to play with, but at the end of the day don’t be afraid to be weird with it. Do stuff that others aren’t if you can think of a reason to do it. Just because other people don’t doesn’t make it a bad idea, and just because most are doesn’t make it a good one. Make oddball decisions sometimes. It’s the best possible way to learn.

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Most interesting how you would casually use ‘Ageism’ (they’re old farts) to describe the very people you want to gain indispensable information from, to shorten the learning curve in completing your vision.

So
. If you want to at least be somewhat technically accurate, I would think it closer to complimentary to describe them as, ‘Smart Old Farts’, ya think?

Funny stuff
.

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Genuinely, that was not my intention.

You are correct here. Not even going to argue with you. I’m so done with arguing with people I don’t need to.

Being respectful to the people I am seeking help from is square one, you are obviously included here.

My apologies.

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