Ok so I’ve heard all the different finishes and such, beadblasted, sodablasted, anodised, satined, some others. I think beadblasting is basically just shooting small beads in a concentrated area to make the whole thing smooth, but that’s about all I know. Could anybody help me out on this?
Yeah. You said it yourself.
Ok cool but what about the other things I mentioned?
Ok. Annodization and Satined are both painting processes. I like annodization better. Satin is more shinier that annodization. Sodablasted, not sure. They probably take Sprite and heat it up. ???
Anodization: Coating metal with a protective or decorative oxide (from dictionary.com ). For yo-yos I believe, it is usually decorative to give it color.
Satin: To sand a yo-yo surface, making it uneven and better for grinds.
Sodablasting (taken from a guide on YYN):
Sodablasting came about through a project to renew the Statue of Liberty in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Sodablasting is a revolutionary process that can remove paint, grease, and neutralize rust without damaging metal, glass, chrome or warp thin sheet metal.
Sodablasting: A Brief History
Compounding the problem was the standard soda used for blasting at the time was a USP No. 5 granular which was relatively cheap but in spite of its granular name, contained a lot of powder. The No. 5 soda did little to remove paint, created excessive dust, compounded the soda regulation problem, and ultimately was not cost effective to use. In an effort to address this problem, Soda manufacturers added “flow additives” like tri-calcium phosphate to the UPS No.5 in an attempt to make it flow better out of the Sandblasters. Keep in mind, the soda manufacturers goal was to sell as much of their soda as possible without having to change the processes significantly to produce a granular soda large enough and consistent enough not to require additives. While the flow additives were effective to some degree in making the existing soda flow better, they did nothing to address the other concerns. The introduction of flow additives created more problems due to the fact that while baking soda is water soluble, tri-calcium phosphate is not.
We got tired very quickly of paying for soda by the bag only to find out much of it was powder. Not only did we have to deal with the additional dust the powder created, we had to pay for the product by weight. Since freight was a significant cost, it was senseless to pay additional freight for the privilege of having all that dust flying around. It was not until a few years ago that a specialty sodium bicarbonate manufacturer began producing a soda granule significantly larger and consistent in size. We were actually able to reduce our costs while increasing our production simply by using the larger soda granule. The decrease in dust produced was also immediately noticeable.
In short…it’s blasting with sodium bicarbonate that has been turned into a larger granule and used much like bead blasting, but does not require a cabinet.
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Thanks Kim.
What about schmooving and any other finishes anyone can think of, at least that are used somewhat often?
Schmooving isn’t a finish. Schmooving it adding extra grooves into the insides of the yo-yo to reduce friction from the string.
Here is an example of a yo-yo with schmoove rings:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/208/467132461_f239660b9c.jpg
