Welcome to the first entry into what should be many. This entry will cover the First prototype.
We need to start from the beginning, which is the inspiration, drive, motivation, and whole reason I started this venture.
When I first designed this yoyo, I was taking influence from 3 specific concepts. The yoyo that was the main inspiration for this project was my Metal Zero (2006). It was one of the first metal production yoyos sold to the public in mass. You can imagine it has it's faults or issues due to it's age. It uses Duncan pads, an A-size bearing and the typical freehand style spacers - it also likes to fall apart. There's not a lot of room there to add silicone, or perform modern tricks on it - yet it's one of my favorite yoyos still and continues to get frequent use even all these years later. Since it was one of my first throws when returning, most of my subsequent throws I bought were in a similar organic shape. Seeking a modern "replacement" for my Metal Zero.
The second influence was the concept of a step ledge that's used in the Terrarian / Legendary Terrarian line. At the time of designing my yoyo I felt like adding a step ledge to the design of the Metal Zero would give it the extra boost in performance and stability that it needed to be more modern while maintaining the feel and "soul" of the original.
The third influence was the MMC. I personally think it's a perfect yo-yo. I was fortunate enough to get it early on as a drop happened soon after I returned. I've put hours every day into this yoyo over the years. Any yoyo I get has to compare to this, and nothing has compared since I've acquired it. I think the only thing I could say is that I find yo-yo's that pair well with it, so that I can play those when I feel the MMC is too wide at times.
So by default I know that I'm subconsciously making design choices inspired by it. I often find myself wishing that I had something that was in between my Metal Zero and MMC when throwing. I've always wanted a modern Metal Zero, and have been waiting for someone to make one - but I realized that it's never going to happen because no one will make my dream yoyo except for myself.
I think that for most of us, we start thinking of ideas to make our ideal yoyo, taking influence from our favorites and then mashing it all into one. I had the idea sketched out on a paper, but it was mostly just in my mind as a fever dream.
While thinking about all of this, my brother suggested that we start a brand. It took me a minute, but I thought it all made sense... We always wanted a clothing brand, but to implement a clothing brand tied with a yoyo brand would be the dream for me. So I pitched the idea to him and he was all for it. So in the end, you can all thank my brother for giving me the support and push to bring this yoyo to reality.
I began working on my concept along with all the art for the brand. I learned CAD and blender, along with digging for any kind of information I could learn about yoyo weight distribution. Unfortunately there's not much to research since there's not a whole lot of documentation on the subject. I was heavily inspired by the yo-yo's designed by B!ST but knew I wasn't going to make anything as intricate as the stradivarius. Instead of researching yoyo physics, and how they worked. I started paying attention to the yoyo's that consistently get mentioned in "favorites" threads, or older yoyos that continue to get played and bought, not simply for nostalgia but because they play well. I felt like this was the best research I had to go off of.
Some time later I finally had a sketch on procreate of the halfcut. The overall idea was there, but I needed to tweak things and make a response system that helped improve the gap width while maintaining the beautiful aesthetic of the Freehand shape. One of the biggest challenges that faced me was the fact that I had no idea how to layout a side-effect yoyo.
A few goals I had in mind were that the yoyo must be a SE yoyo. The reasoning behind this is simple - my MMC is beat up and it still plays extremely smooth. A large reason why I came back into throwing and stayed was because of One Drop's yo-yos and it's side effect system. I just simply love everything about it. You can't strip the yo-yo, and if you do, replace the side effects. You can fine tune your yoyo to get it dead smooth. You can modify the weight and look of the yoyo to match your preferences. It gives you different setups that all give you a different feel within one yoyo design. The concept is just perfect to me, and the most important part is that I love the look of a Side Effect yoyo.
The next issue was caps, I had no idea how to make them fit, where to put them, and how to make the weight distribution work with them, or where to source getting them made. Since I didn't own calipers and I really didn't know how to implement the design element at the time I left out the cap design for my original project, just focusing on a basic side effect yoyo.
The overall cup and shape design didn't take me long since I was modeling it after a very classic organic shape. Deciding on where to put the ledge, how big to make it, and how to round off the rim of the yoyo was all a guess - I really just went off intuition. Once the cup design was complete, I had to work on the response area.
To me, the response area is the most important part of an organic yoyo. The trouble at the time was deciding on which style of response design to go for. The issue was simple, I had 3~ basic choices to choose from. The most important goal was to maintain the shape of the freehand while improving the gap width/catch zone to find a middle ground between the Metal Zero and MMC.
The first design is the classic "shmoove groove" as first seen on The End from Doc Pop. This design element was achieved by flattening part of the existing yoyo ( Anti-Yo Eetsit) then placing a larger groove around the 19mm response pad. This gives you less surface to come into contact, helping the organic yoyo's performance. It's also been said to improve Suicide tricks by having more airflow to keep the loop open. Regardless if that last one is true, there's no denying a shmoove groove helps an organic yoyo.
To note, when this design is implemented the yoyo's gap width can't be improved if I keep the original shape - it would like reproducing a YWET if I went with this design - Something I don't know if I am blatantly allowed to copy.
The second is the next design element invented to help reduce sleep loss and increase stability by pushing the walls further out by implementing a response bump. This bump was most notable at it's earliest on the Cascade to me. At the time of it's release, due to this response bump design it wasn't even considered an organic in 2012. I feel like the MMC was the yoyo to normalize this response bump and shift the "definition" of organic. To me, there needs to be a separation between Organic and Modern organic. I feel anything that cuts away from a completely round profile, bumps, lips, etc, depending on their severity push a yo-yo further from Organic and closer to a soft H or "Modern Organic." For me, the response bump designs were my last choice. I felt like it was too extreme of a design to add a large response bump to a yoyo design that inherently wanted to be slim and high wall. I also don't care for the way you're forced to alter the shape of the profile to reduce string friction - I wanted to maintain the original shape of the organic yoyo I love so much. But on that same end, I was trying to merge the MMC and Metal Zero, so the design concept was still up for debate because the Mecha Bapezilla released by RSO used this concept to a smaller degree, with success.
The third and final design element was inspired with the birth of the Parlay. Another yo-yo I cherish and love deeply alongside my MMC. To me, the Parlay and MMC are really good paired together due to their similarities in play, but difference in specs. I think that on a subconscious level I really wanted to design a yoyo that fit alongside these two throws now that I'm writing this. I am not looking to replace either of them, I just want to design a yo-yo that compliments the two. Because of that, I was leaning toward the Parlay's "schmoove ring" as defined by it's creator. I realized upon further observation that the Schmoove Ring design implements two points of contact by merging both of the two concepts above into one. So technically, it's the "worst" of the two designs in terms of how much string is in contact with the wall of the yoyo. It fixes this issue by having minimal points of contact at those two points while widening the catch zone. Like anything in yo-yo design, it's a give and take. In the first design, a flat wall and schmoove, there's one point of contact at the end of the schmoove, but the contact point is large depending on how extreme of an angle your string breaks off of the yoyo. The Schmoove Ring design gives you more angle of string break and a larger catch zone. Both of these elements make me feel like this concept is the best of both worlds while also maintaining the shape I didn't want to disturb.
It took me months of going through different designs in the response area. I distinctively remember thinking that these guys already spent the time doing exactly what I was doing and found the best solutions - it was really hard to improve on their original concepts without blatantly "stealing" their design concepts.
This was probably the most time spent on the yoyo design. Going back and forth, measuring, observing, and playing the different yoyos I own to try and objectively judge the response area alone without taking the weight distribution into consideration.
In the end I decided that I wanted to maintain the original shape as much as possible, and bring something new to the table. I felt like innovation in the response area location is where organic yoyos shine. So my design I came up with was a "double response bump" near the response area. The concept was that as I observed yoyo's in play and felt the most string contact outside of the wall was near the response pads. I felt that if I could reduce string contact there then it would help boost performance without disturbing the profile of the yoyo.
All of these design elements were a shot in the dark since I had never designed a yoyo, used CAD, or even done anything similar to this before. I hadn't even owned calipers at the time of designing my first prototype I was so inexperienced.
Once I finished deciding on the yoyo design I sent it to the manufacturer. But since I was so new to designing I kept wanting to change things. Even mid way I changed the design at least 2-3 times in the email conversation after the first file was sent. I felt bad for doing it, but the wait was excruciating and I felt like I was learning something new every week after I sent in the final file. I kept second guessing myself, thinking that I was missing something.
For whatever reason (covid, and i'm an idiot who picked 7068) it took 4 months to get my prototype completed. 7068 was out of stock so I had to wait, I knew that it was a harder material to source - but it seems like it's a great AL to use which not a lot of people are experimenting with. So for me, I required 7068 because I feel that the extra density will increase the yoyo performance innately. So the 4 month wait time was way longer than the 1-2 month I was expecting. Anyways, the yoyo finally landed in my hands and it honestly felt amazing. I thought it was the bees-knees, and quite frankly I still do.
It played exactly like how I imagined. It was ultra stable, but it still felt light and fun enough to play for hours and I thought that the response worked out perfectly to balance modern performance while maintaining the old school feel. I felt like I landed on a winner, but I didn't want to write it off just yet and continued my analyzations. In terms of manufacturing, everything was better than I could've imagined and it came out ultra dead smooth with a great blasted finish. To me, definitely hit a winner on my first attempt and am proud of it.
What a journey!!