^^Somehow I thanked you twice?! I think French summed it up nicely.
It’s difficult to be on the inside looking out with regards to prices, but I don’t think the notion that any yoyo over $5 is outrageous to the general public is accurate at all. If anything, especially with wood yoyos; since wood is associate with things that are more handcrafted. I don’t mean something in a blister pack that’s spray-painted, but rather something like what Paul makes, that has more art and character.
I mean people buy wood pens for $15 and more at craft shows all day long. I think if people saw beautiful wood yoyos at a booth in a craft fair, not everyone would think $30 was outrageous.
Paul, Is the post here because you’re not selling? You would know better than we. What about a sub $20 no-frills high performance fixed axle wood yoyo? That seems to be missing. Something that plays great for around $15, might get more people into trying out wood.
I don’t know if you’d be interested in this idea, but maybe you could even find a manufacturer to produce one of your designs for less than you could. Some other high end makers have done that, and continued to manufacture other designs in the US or Canada, or wherever. You could have an inexpensive, plain-Jane model with modern fixie play characteristics, and continue to make you’re nicer handmade, in-house models.
Just brainstorming… I hope you continue to make yoyos, and that people will buy them. The Acorn is on my short list.
When I throw at the shop, one of the most common responses I get is, “oh, a yoyo. I haven’t seen one of those in years, do people still do that?”
The reason I say that the average (or most) people wouldn’t spend five bucks for a yo-yo is because most folks wouldn’t buy one at any price. The point I was trying to make is that when yo-yos were wildly popular, a three piece glued wood axle yo-yo was not perceived as cheap or low quality or something that screams please kill me.
I hear you Kevinm. I still get “Have you ever seen Tommy Smothers?”, even though the Smothers Brothers was cancelled in 1969! Show’s the power of TV exposure. Wonder what would happen if a modern TV personality was killer at yoyoing, and frequently threw on TV?
My guess is that the impact would be huge if young people watched a tv show that featured yo-yos in a cool way…do kids still say cool?
I still have two Bart Simpson yo-yos, btw. The Simpsons probably didn’t promote yo-ing in the best light, but I like my Bart yos, and I guess I am also an under-achiever and proud of it.
I just picked up a couple more BC Apollo yoyos the other day on ebay (from skilltoys.net David Hall no less). The Apollo is a pretty great budget non-take apart wood throw. The laminated wood allows them to be more consistently weighted and thus, less vibey. It’s a great place to start if someone wants to learn the soul of yoyoing.
One thing about wood, and any responsive yoyo really, is that throwing it will teach you to be a lot smoother than you were before. Unresponsive yoyos forgive a lot of herky jerky movements that responsive yoyos would bust your knuckles for.
What I was referring ‘from around here’ in my previous post about low quality yoyos was my country.
And I mean they literally looked like this.
When I was a kid, we have wooden yoyo fad once in a few years at school, until modern yoyos strike and people don’t look back anymore. I bought these countless of times, they were like a few cents. The best thing you can do is gravity pull, doesn’t even sleep unless you wanna break the string in a few seconds. The inner side of the rim is really sharp that if you loop it, it’ll break the string too.
When people hear ‘wooden yoyos’, this is what they had in mind.
I did however tried making a better quality wooden fixie a few years back, and it always has a spot in my go to case. Most if not all yoyoer I met who tried it got surprised because it doesn’t play like what they did in the past. This is what I wanted to change.
Currently I wish I could make more wooden yoyos, but in order to make it to my liking I had no other choice than turning them myself, which I’m lacking the tooling at the moment. The custom one I made before was turned by more of a craft maker who turn it ‘manual’ manual, as there is no more precise method, let alone cnc wood turner anywhere.
Every day. The only yo-yo I’ve thrown today so far is my cherry JFF.
As far as demand goes, beats me. I just built a screw chuck for a wood lathe this past weekend to try to make what I can’t quite buy; way different than your router method. Hope the screw doesn’t strip the wood! I’m not really a woodworker… yet.
Here’s what I’m trying to make for myself:
Eh/Baldwin2015/JFF ratio (wider) for good backhand balances and shoot the moons.
Curves right out of the gap like the Eh for easier shoot the moon control.
Rounded rims for comfort (Eh is horrible, Baldwin is decent).
Non-oak body (smooth, closed grain), 1/4’’ walnut axle
I’m coming back to it, because I was on a hiatus from yoyoing in general for a while.
Granted, when I stopped, I was mostly throwing my zombie (still responsive despite all the high tech materials) but my first big jump was from Hummingbird Tricksters to No-Jive/Mandalas and Silver bullets.
I’ve just recently been digging back into my collection and remembering the other higher performance woodies w/bearings that were coming out right as my attention turned to metals in the 90s.
I do agree with one of the earlier statements that it would be cool to see someone do a new higher performance wood body unresponsive with C bearing —if it was viable. is it? i have no idea— just to investigate the meeting of the two worlds… but, the market might be so small, that its not viable.
Obviously the one person you could think of that might do it is Tom Kuhn, but unfortunately that shop is f’ed up these days they can’t even manage to effectively sell RD’s and other models they’ve had out for years. Decades even. Oh how the mighty have fallen . . . but I digress.
Now I’m curious to check out Jensen mentioned above, simply to see if they’ve taken up the mantle that TK has managed to drop and step all over so completely in the last few years.
among other things:
• the satisfying thwack of wood as it connects with your palm following a huge flyaway dismount.
• the recognition that the yo-yo (and usually the string, too) was very recently part of a living organism. this reminds you that YOU are alive, that your playing is an extension of your life, and that your experience in life is fleeting and not to be wasted.
• watching over time as your sweat gives a wooden yo-yo its patina, smoothing its rough edges and enriching the color of its grain. like an old school martial artist whose white belt gradually darkens with training, it gives you a physical symbol of the time and effort you take.
• knowing that you’re able to create new tricks with the same technology that has been used for generations. this connects you to yo-yoing’s roots very directly, as you share the same tactile experience as pedro flores, barney akers, gus somera, bob rule, dale oliver, dale myrberg, tom kuhn…
• looping out of spirit bomb
• the confidence that the yo-yo isn’t doing the trick FOR you. you’ve got to work for even a decent sleeper on wood. there’s nothing to hide behind. and the other side of that is that, when you hit a hard trick, there’s nothing BESIDES your ability to wed the right technique to a moment in time which enabled you to do it.
• camaraderie: the people who throw wood represent a weird, wonderful little tribe within yo-yoing.
• the fact that everyday people get it, young and old. they don’t think your yo-yo has a motor in it. they don’t think it’s a “trick yo-yo”. it behaves as they expect and can do tricks they can comprehend (and, sure, stuff they can’t too). throwing wood draws people in - in a way that someone staring at their metal yo-yo while ripping through the latest trendy combo will never know.
• the smell of a scorched axle.
• the liberation you feel when you come to terms with the fact that it’s not about winning. i mean, we have fun, casual little contests (butterfly HORSE could have its own bullet point here). but in our modern yo-yo world which is so often dominated by the desire to dominate, throwing fixed is still just about the simple joy of PLAYING.
