all right I just finished making this yo-yo I tried a different method that I kind of made up and kind of combine different methods that I seen there's other ways to make yo-yos out there but this seems to work really well for me so I'm going to just go through the process of how to make it let me show you how it works basically it's it's all wood there's just a wood dowel going through it so there's no bearings so it doesn't sleep for very long but it does work fairly well for a homemade yo-yo alright let's get started alright first step it's very similar to the would top project that we do here as to cut out these blanks these circles and all I do is just use a three inch hole saw for that so and this piece of wood is a little bit more than a half inch eye things like point six inches thick we could go thicker but yeah this seems to work out just fine okay the setup is pretty simple what I've done is I've actually turned down some plastic blanks for a pen and I just use these as spacers now so just put that on there and these I don't use any bushings in these I leave the whole small hole that's right on the mandrel there then I take a popsicle stick and break it in half the other one on and what that does is it creates a space so you can see it's almost the exact same space is what we need for the yo-yo anyway and that makes it so that you can see in between them okay so I can bring them together and then put one above and one below inside okay so I'll bring on my other spacer on there bring it in shut it down in there and then tighten it up now notice my hand is over here so I can hold this and then tighten this over here you want to get it fairly tight so that the causes enough you know grip Sobeys so the popsicle stick doesn't fly out so I'm going to put the pliers on here then I'm just going to hold this steady while I tighten it right here you want to go until these are just really solid in there you don't want to go super tight because then you might warp the bar okay alright then we'll bring in the tailstock so this comes in and helps support it we'll lock that in place and you want to be able to turn this right here turn this and if the whole thing doesn't move then you need to make it just a little bit tighter until you can turn this and have everything else smooth okay and that's when it's at the right amount of pressure again too much pressure can warp the bar so don't put too much on there all right so I'm going to bring in the tool rest now get fairly close but make sure you spin this to make sure that the sticks aren't going to hit it okay if they do then you need to back it out and then trim them down before turning you know before getting it closer again all right so now we're ready to actually start making the yo-yo and and this is a little bit more advanced because you have to be able to make both of those the exact same if you make one bigger than the other then your yo-yo will turn one way or the other so you've got to be really careful okay the first thing I'm going to do is just turn everything down and then work on the inside to create this this V shape so it helps direct the string into the groove I'm just going to make everything the same size I don't know if you saw they're not the piece of the popsicle stick flew out there so what I'm going to do I'm going to make sure the rest of it doesn't follow I'm going to tighten this just a little bit more just to make sure it still should be okay there's still pieces on both the top and bottom you know the trick to this is making both of them the same okay that should take care of the bruise right next I'm going to focus on the sides and again whatever you do to one side you want to do the exact same thing together so keep the design simple so you can repeat it we switch it over to this side make sure you watch out for these threads right here you know want your knuckle to get it when you're turning this side all right so well not too bad so now I'll next step would be you know sanding and finishing and then we can assemble the yoyo for sanding I like to move everything out of the way and anything with a lot of grooves and stuff like that I like to use the sponge sander so it'll form to whatever I'm sanding don't push too hard because then it will it'll just burn and waste it away you know buy the cheap ones from Harbor Freight so you know you don't fry when you beat them up anyway all right so here we go so and it a little bit design as you sit there you leave it there for a long time that's when it starts burning and degrading the sponge so little bits at a time keep it moving use different parts of a sponge as well you're trying to get what you want to try to get out are any scratches that are grooves that you left with the tool use sandpaper - if you want to even put the sandpaper on the sponge sometimes it gets hot you can also slow down the speed of the wave if it you know if it's getting too hot for you alright now that I got it mostly sanded I'm going to add some design Addington groove then I'll take this wire that I have here put it in the groove hold down some burn marks there that'll make it look cooler usually I would put friction polish wallets on the lathe but I think because this spacer is covering up a lot of the wood I'm going to just take it off the lathe and just do some find some additional sanding on those spots and on the inside and then just wipe on some oil to finish it off the way to get it back off the leg you will most likely have to use the pliers again put on there and turn this right here away from you and that will loosen this whoa all right add some boiled linseed oil here I'm just going to a little bit on a rag wipe it on see how it makes a lot shinier brings out the color so you want to wipe it on and let it soak into the wood a little bit and then you want to wipe off as much as you can you don't want to leave it on there really thick because I might kind of get sticky and that won't work very well with your stream all right I'm going to try something different with this yo-yo instead of doing the wooden shaft I found this piece of aluminum and I'm going to try that and now to make sure I get at the exact right length I put some popsicle sticks in there again I'm going to use dial caliper and measure how thick that is and it's about 1.3 so I will cut and make sure that my length of this is the exact same thickness or length as this is thick and then I'll assemble it and I got it as close as I could with the bolt cutters but I made it a little bit big because I want to be able to clean up rough edge that the bolt cutters leave behind so now I'm going to file it down the rest of the way every once in a while just check it obviously the wooden dowel method probably a lot faster but I'm thinking the metal will make it so the yo-yo can coast better with a much smoother surface and I even took the time to buff the ends make them nice and shiny and then kinda Center where the string is going to go you know buff it up real nice so that it's really smooth give the glue something more to hang on to I'm going to take some pliers and just rough up the ends leaving this leave the centre nice and smooth so the string can go in there so I'm just going to just twist these back and forth a little bit and just let them you know rough up the edges a little bit alright now I'm going to do and put a little bit of glue on some scrap paper and there's a bamboo skewer and I'm going to put some superglue in there do the same thing to the other one try not to get too much on the inside all right now I'll take this and I'll put it from the inside down like that I'll take my spacers and put them in there I'll take my other one and put it on the top I'm gonna do it fairly quickly because that glue solidifies really fast looks like I didn't get it down all the way but now first time trying that technique I think it did pretty good so just make sure we next time we get that all the way down and then put on the next one and that should do it so we would like that for a little bit and should be good you can use the spray the spray will make the glue dry even faster yeah that should be good all right now for the string so when you buy a yo-yo string it comes and the end of it is actually twisted together so if you untwist it you can actually see how it separates into two pieces there all right so I opened it up and you just keep on twisting it until you open it up big enough to go around your yo-yo keep it tight because you don't want it to Ravel up on itself okay and now we can just retwist it and it's wrapped around the post now so if your string ever breaks and you get a new string that's how you would install it also the other side has this loop okay there's here's the loop it's already pre tied and love you or like that's the wrong size for my finger but all you have to do is pull the string through itself so it loops around itself then you put your finger through that and then it just cinches down onto your finger okay I tried it and it works pretty good except for the fact that I had this shaft is a little bit more on one side than the other and makes this side of the yoyo slightly heavier so as it's in you know sleeping coasting down at the bottom of the string it starts to slowly tip one way mmm okay in hindsight putting this on here with the sticks works okay but as you can see they everyone smell one of them might fly out so afterwards you know did a little brainstorming what could work better and you know solution was simple just a couple of washers okay and just put the washers on there that way if for some reason you were to lose you know it was the tension on there don't come flying out at you okay now the ones that I have there the whole is kind of big so I'm going to go buy some washers they're nice and thick you know fairly big around but hopefully I can get it so the size is just the same size of the mandrel as far as the inside hole of the washers but these should work just fine just put it on there like that and then you have the little gap there to help you know where the center is and it seems to work better you don't have to get this as tight to keep it from to keep these from moving you know and you don't have to worry about this splinter of wood coming out and getting you if they use washers instead of the instead of sticks okay and these still work good for creating the space when you're gluing everything together so this is the one that you saw me make this is the second one I've ever made this is the first one that I made this one had the a wood Center and I used wood glue this one I have the metal center and I use the superglue after playing with both of them this one seems to work a little bit better it sleeps better it might be the fact that it's a little bit smooth that this string was able to to wear down the would make it nice and smooth I even even after buffing this and making it as smooth as I could it seemed to slip a little bit this one is solid it's actually even a little bit heavier and this one if you look at it you can actually twist it like this about that much and that's actually the dowel flexing in there so that's why this one seems a little bit more it might be more prone to breaking if somehow somebody were to you know take that and just crank it it would just definitely just twist that dowel apart on the inside and be kind of hard to fix that especially because it glued everything in now but for a quick project that's not very expensive to make either one would be fine either way so take your pick and have fun with the project