I’ve also seen various rubbers used. My Aquarius has rubber rims, as does my Xodus II. Not sure what my BigYo is made from exactly but it is a plastic. My Fiesta XX is celcon. There’s also modern wood yoyos being made, as well as not so modern wood yoyos. There have also been yoyos made from titanium and magnesium.
There’s a LOT of things you can make a yoyo from. The issue becomes size(diameter and width) vs weight coupled with stiffness/rigidity and durability. Steel is too heavy, for example.
The metal in HG is copper. That’s the reason they stopped using it. The price of copper went through the roof making the hg material extremely expensive to make.
I’ve seen a Bronze yoyo. And I’ve also seen a yoyo made out of tool steel.
I’d be interested to know the sizes and weights of those steel and bronze yoyos, mainly because I’m interested to see what they did as far as design to keep the weight at a minimum.
I would also think that using copper as a metal would probably require that they do some sort of treatment to the metal to prevent it from discoloring so quickly. But there’s copper in bronze as well, so I know it is subject to the same discoloring. My parents have or had some Bennet sculptures and I know there’s a few green spots on them in areas that are difficult to polish.
duncan Mg is magensium
ST. EEL is made of… wait, i forgot. (kidding, steel)
Fiesta XX is celcon i believe.
and there are som woods with bearings.
i’ve seen titanium ones too.
I’ve always thought it would be neat of companies played around with exotic materials. Like a modern and fully unresponsive yoyo made of wood. Or other non-competition oriented yoyos that are made to have a more luxurious feel that could incorporate leather and such.