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[Jeremy McCreary]

I see I need to update this thread.  I just got my second vaccine and am in the waiting area.  I will come back to this later to share a trip I made to Rochester with Jim Neff.

Congrats!

[the Earl of Whirl]

Well, I see that I did report some of my late November trip to the state of New York.  It was when I stayed at Jim Neff’s home.  What a joy that was!!!  We traveled over to Don Olney’s place where he said he had three boxes for me.  It turns out that I did not hear him correctly.  He had three PILES of boxes and we barely got it all in the big van I rented for the trip.  The Don Olney collection continues to surprise me over and over.  In a recent phone conversation with Don he told me how he found another box with m name on it and he has started another pile for me!!!  I am not sure how I can sneak away for another trip up there, but I will surely be thinking of different ways to pull it off.

Don reports that he is finally into one room with his computer and laser cutter which is connected to another small room they call the paint room.  That is an amazing accomplishment.  He also reports that the Memorial Museum in Rochester has called him about selling some of his items!  That also sounds pretty exciting to me.  We will see how that turns out.

[the Earl of Whirl]

This is a collection that keeps on giving.  A little over five years from the last post on this thread, I got talking to Don about Easter and tops.  “I made an Easter top.  I was quite proud of it.”  He described it and I went looking for one.  He said he made a lot of them but I have only uncovered two.  “That’s it” he said after I sent him a picture.  It has an egg shape with a stem and an Easter bunny printed on the side.  The tip is a small protrusion coming off the bottom of the wooden egg.  “It had a nice spin even though it did not look like it would do very well.  And it would stop gently on its side when it was done.”

[ta0]

Thanks for sharing the story, Mike. But we want to see the photo of that Easter top!

[the Earl of Whirl]

I got interrupted and was not able to finish the story.  He said he did some business with Pier 1 and they liked his Christmas tops.  They asked if he had any Easter tops and that got him going on this new design.  Did you make a lot of them, I asked……a thousand?  Way more than that, he said.  Two thousand.  Way more.  Five thousand?  Don said he had them in containers that held a gross each and they had a thousand stores.  Ten thousand I exclaimed and he just chuckled.  He still has some serious stories to tell.

[ta0]

I don't recall seeing those wooden egg tops before. But this reminds me a true egg top from Don:



Spinning:



There is a little hole on the bottom (tip) from where the egg was emptied. I'm not sure why he didn't do it on the side covered by the stem.

This is a pretty fragile top, but at least it's not meant to be thrown. Yesterday I freestyled for the first time with a terracota top I got from Rocco 

EDIT: I just checked with a flashlight and there is a bigger hole in the egg shell covered by the stem. I guess the little hole at the tip was made to let air in while draining from the other one.

[ortwin]

...
EDIT: I just checked with a flashlight and there is a bigger hole in the egg shell covered by the stem. I guess the little hole at the tip was made to let air in while draining from the other one.

Yes, something like that I had planned to write as response, but your "EDIT" was faster. That is the way I learned to empty eggs needed for Easter decoration: Make a hole on either side, blow (hard) into one so everything inside exits the other hole. I remember it was quite hard to to blow with sufficient pressure when I did it last time a few years ago. I did not have a suitable syringe at hand, otherwise one hole would suffice and your head does not get that red.

[the Earl of Whirl]

In Don’s items I have found an egg carton.  In it were several eggs.  Some were wood.  Some were blown eggs and one blown egg had the Toucrafter logo on it.  This shows his early experiments with using real eggs as tops for Easter.  He eventually decided against that and came up with several egg designs with a little raised point for a tip!!!  I have also been shocked at all the printing on so many spinners and finally asked him about it.  He said they printed all that at the Toycrafter.  I thought they had that work done by others and they just assembled the items.  Turns out Toycrafter printed for a number of different companies!!!  He said they used “pad printing.”