Hopefully everyone isn’t getting tired of my polished yoyo pictures, as I’ve got a couple more! Here’s a picture of my Something New Angle (left) and GWAY Daredevil (right). I tried something a little different with these two and polished the entire outside of each half. So the outside of the yoyo is polished, and the inside retains its original anodization.
I love the way that the reflections came out in that picture. For example, you can easily see the Daredevil’s orange inner cup reflected on the inside of the New Angle. And if you look closely, you can see the Daredevil’s light green response pad on the right half and a reflection of the left half’s response pad just to the right of it. This next profile picture of the Daredevil shows the same thing, but you don’t actually see the pads - just their reflections.
I didn’t plan to polishing the entire outside of the cups, but I kind of messed up my edge since I didn’t align the sandpaper correctly - oops! I didn’t want to have a scraped area on the yoyo, so I went ahead and polished the entire side (in for a penny, in for a pound). It was a happy accident, as I think that it really turned out nice. I didn’t end up liking the full-blown orange fade anodization, as much as I thought I would, but now that the orange is limited to an accent color it’s perfect!
I’ve always loved how the Daredevil plays, and it’s been a favorite of mine for a long time. It’s ever-so-slightly undersized at 53mm, fairly light at 62 grams, and has a D-sized bearing. Honestly, its shape isn’t my favorite because it’s so rounded, but it’s so comfy and performs so well that the shape doesn’t really bother me. Its binds are fantastic, and it’s often my go-to yoyo when I’m trying to learn a new bind since it’s perfect in that regard. I usually end up using Permatex Ultra Grey instead of response pads for my favorite throws, but the Daredevil doesn’t even need that treatment to get perfect binds. And now that it looks so sweet after polishing, it’s been my daily carry for the last few weeks.
If anyone is interested in seeing a “before” picture of the New Angle (first pic, left side), I posted a picture earlier in the thread with the unpolished green New Angle next to my gray one where I just polished the rims.
I’ve polished dozens of yoyos, so by now I’m pretty good at it and have learned a lot - mostly from making mistakes and other trial-and-error situations. I started writing a tutorial and will share it on the Yoyo Mods and Maintenance forum forum here on YYE once it’s done.