I guess I’d consider this an art exhibit, but regardless of topic genre please follow me as I take you on a wonderful journey of my anxiety induced experiments with heat coloring stainless steel yoyo’s.
So I’d recently gotten interested in trying to color stainless steel with heat because I realized it’s a much simpler (In theory) project than trying to anodize my own aluminum yoyo that I have.
I’d just recieved the Dressel Design Assassin, and YoyoFactory LowerKase so I was going to at least come out with one throw looking nice.
This is a color chart, pay attention to the temps if you want to try this yourself and you have access to a laser thermometer which I did, but for some anxiety induced reason, didn’t use!
color usually is a pretty good indicator of temperature, if you’re able to detect the subtle changes, they don’t go fast, but there’s one thing I’ll cover in a bit called carryover that could push what you want to achieve to what you’re given.
Preparation:
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yoyo, stainless steel needed, won’t work with aluminum.
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degreaser, I used oxyclean orange which unfortunately for me turns out didn’t work as well as I thought, but it’s what I had on hand.
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Butane torch, I highly suggest something with a high capacity tank because you may run out midway.
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either something to hold the yoyo half up if you want to heat the inner cup, or pliers, I chose not to use pliers because I was afraid of crushing the section where you insert the axle so I used a clothes hanger that was steel as well to hook it onto that and heat it in the air.
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something to cover it just in case it rains and you’re outside because you need to let it cool down naturally.
So I started out by removing everything, and trying to clean it, using degreaser to remove any stains, grease, and fingerprints from the throw because I didn’t want those being etched or branded onto it permenantly, but as luck would have it my super old bottle of orange glo degreaser was gone and all I had left was some oxyclean orange degreaser that I thought would do the same… it didn’t as you can see with some stains on the throw.
once stripped, I propped it up, and started to heat.
I’d watched a few videos of how to do the process because while I had worked with metals before, it was precious metals like silver and gold and i’d never heat treated steel or tried to make jewelry out of it so it was somewhat new to me.
Like magic things started to change, from a copperish orange to a pinkish red, then I stopped for a bit, as I waited little by little did I apply heat because CARRYOVER!
So like a good steak you want to cook your yoyo till it’s almost done, but not all the way, because carryover will continue to cook or color in this instance your yoyo even after you’ve stopped applying heat it will retain it very well, and apart from quenching it in water, there’s not much you can do to stop it. I didn’t use water, mostly because I didn’t enjoy the results I saw from using it with heat coloring so be sure to stop-the heat, drop-the torch for a bit to view your target, and roll- the torch over the yoyo as you slowly try to bring it back up to temp to see is slowly get closer and closer to your desired color.
Finally, and I thought I was done woo, first success I thought! I let it cool for a couple of minutes and while it was still hot I wanted to clean some of the gunk off, and that’s where I messed up the first one.
You must let it cool naturally. that means don’t touch it, don’t fiddle with it, don’t even look at it for an hour or more for that steel to cool down to room temp in order to keep it from rubbing off or being stained by your fingers in any way. I may not know why this happens, but I know the results of doing the wrong thing at the wrong time from it.
These were not the results I was looking for after having cleaned it from touching it the first time, there’s barely any color, it’s just gotten a little darker with some permanant staining on the sides of the cup.
So I thought, well that’s it, I didn’t get it, good try, but the first time is one of the only times you have to get a real Vibrant color.
You can save it by sanding it and polishing it again to it’s raw state but I don’t have the time or extra materials for that so I waited, debated, suffered a little and decided to go for broke and heat it more!
Second results as you can see that it might be in the blue gray section of the color spectrum from the heating charts above, but it’s clearly darker when we compare it to the LowerKase.
So what was there to do then?
I torched the ■■■■ out of my LowerKase
And it turned out nicer than the first! while the photo camera makes the colors a little fainter than what I can see them as, it’s clearly a more brownish golden color, almost like a really nice shiny copper which is something I enjoyed the look of for the lowerkase.
I don’t regret doing this to my yoyos, and after having put them back together, they still play great so at this point I’m going to continue to torch the ■■■■ out of my assassin and see how far I can go towards the end without destroying it!
If you end up doing this please get an adult with experience to do this for you if you’re not of age, this is dangerous and you could seriously injure or maim youself.
For everyone else, please be careful and have fun experimenting!