Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ortwin]

Peg top progress log of ortwin and random questions
(I stole the title of the topic kind of from paxl.)
Up to now I hijacked other topics for my progress reports and for my beginner questions regarding throwing tops.
My first physical contact with these kind of tops was recently at the Marines festival 2022.

From Marines I cam e back with these two tops: the red and green one is a Bearing King  knock off that Ludo gave me, the wooden one Rocco made for me on the spot in Marines.

At Marines I had many good teachers, so when I came home I could sometimes land a boomerang with the plastic top and do a sky rocket sometimes with the wooden top.

After receiving help regarding the correct string length here on the forum  from ta0 and Texture for the BK ko, I could get faster boomerangs that allowed me to successfully perform the "merry go round" trick. Alas, before I reached the state where I would have said "I can do that trick!" I broke the plastic tip on that top. Now I will have to wait until I find/get another bearing top with plastic tip so that I can continue to practice indoor the tricks I plan to be able to do with a bearing top:

• merry go round
• pole dancer
• gyroscopic flop
• mach 5

In the meantime I start to play more with the wooden top (outside or maybe in the cellar).
My first goal for that fixed tip top:

• target
• big scoop
• boomerang
• wire walker

Surely I will come back with more questions for you before I will report serious progress!

[ta0]

Wonderful!
I'm sure you will achieve your goals. You will be an expert top player in the eyes of any non serious player. But I'm not sure you will not want more when you reach them! 

[Texture]

Keep practicing and you’ll be caught up with the experts in no time. 

[jim in paris]

salut Ortwin

well , if I had known you would get hooked so fast,
I would have stuffed you with bearing tops before you left !

 I ' ll send you a pack soon
 

jim

[ortwin]

..., if I had known you would get hooked so fast,
...

And you see what it says below my name in the forum now?
Yes, you also convinced me to become an ITSA member.

[ortwin]

...
well , if I had known you would get hooked so fast,
I would have stuffed you with bearing tops before you left !

 I ' ll send you a pack soon
...

Well, if I had known that I would be hooked already I would have bought some tops at Marines!
 
Thank you for planning to send me a pack, BUT I could not wait that long:


I had to go today to that toy store in town where I first saw  a peg top / throw top here in Germany just this January.
It is a Trompos Space Saturno, the only one they carry. But I had the choice of two colors - the other one they had I liked even less.
Since I had a question regarding the available colors or the tip material or something, the clerk had to get the boss of the shop for me.
This woman then was very happy that someone had some interest in these tops. She told me she had seen them and gotten them at the toy fair at Nuremberg some years ago. She said, yes she learned to play a bit with them but now she had not practiced for quite a while.
She got her Trompo Space top from a drawer and we did some throws in the toy store and in the street in front of it.
It seemed the tricks she was aware of and could perform at some point were the spinner and the sky rocket.That explains why she was so impressed when I showed off by performing a boomerang (at the second attempt, landing it somehow on my hand just above my head)  and a (lame) merry go round. She will now take her top home to practice more...... 

So far this top works for me, it is a bearing top but is has a steel tip, so no playing in the flat.
Somehow I managed to pull the tip out of the top while trying a boomerang, I could push it back in, no problem there, still I think I must doing something wrong. It happened also a few times with the Bearing King until I modded it a bit so the tip could not be pulled out any longer. But then eventually it broke.

[ortwin]

...
Somehow I managed to pull the tip out of the top while trying a boomerang, I could push it back in, no problem there, still I think I must doing something wrong. It happened also a few times with the Bearing King until I modded it a bit so the tip could not be pulled out any longer. But then eventually it broke.

Uuups! I did it again!
This time I am really happy that I found the tip again. I had to search for quite a while! For this tip I do not see an easy way to protect it from falling out as wit the BK tip. Maybe crazy glue the outside of the bearing to the plastic of the top?
For now I try to wind the string a bit less firm around the tip, maybe that I wound it too tight caused the problem. I t would make me unhappy if I broke my second top that fast.

[ta0]

The story with the shop owner is wonderful! I love that you ended up throwing tops with her in front of the store. You have already started impressing people with your skills and spreading the love for the game! 

Mm . . .  That shouldn't happen. I pull hard on one of my Saturno bearing tips and didn't come out.
Yes, I would put crazy glue on the outside of the bearing. But just the minimum because you don't want it to spill over into the bearing race.

[Texture]

That is weird. I've know the Saturno extreme rollers and the Pegasus rollers to be extremely difficult to pull their tips out.... 

[ortwin]

That is weird. I've know the Saturno extreme rollers and the Pegasus rollers to be extremely difficult to pull their tips out.... 

Yes, maybe it is me and my "technique". Mermouy said ,when he saw my attempts at throwing in Marines, something  like: "More feeling! Not only Teutonic power!"

[ortwin]

Are bearing tip tops always so loud when they work well?
I removed the oil from the bearing of my Saturno, it seems to spin  better now, but I think it became even louder too.
Maybe I should just get  a fixed tip top with a plastic tip for playing inside, just to make sure that the kids can sleep while I am not ruining the hard wood floor.

[Texture]

Some bearing tops can be very loud, but the saturno roller shouldn’t be. 

[ta0]

For maximum spin times dry bearings spin the longest, but with a little light oil they can be pretty silent and still spin quite a bit. Yes, the noise can be annoying and also removes some of the "magic" for spectators. I do keep some "silent" bearing tops for that reason.

[ortwin]

Progress report
 Today it was sunny here in Göttingen and I could practice for about 35 minutes in a park while I was waiting for my daughter when she took a violin lesson at her teachers house.
In principle I  did at least one of each  of the following:

• Spinner
• Big Scoop
• Skyrocket
• Boomerang
• Merry-Go-Round
• Hacky Top
• Gyroscopic Flop

That sounds like I got really somewhere already, but I said "in principle". By that I mean that in many of those tricks I am lacking consistency, most of those tricks look still very inelegant when I perform them (even when technically correct), and finally not all tricks were done technically correct: e.g. the gyroscopic flop was nowhere near the center of the string.
Nevertheless I am so happy with my progress, that I am motivated enough to keep on practicing. One day I might even be able to do these tricks (plus the "pole dancer" and "mach 5") well enough that I film  them to prove my words.

[Texture]

Those are some great tricks! Have you tried to do Crazy 8s? I actually learned it before the  Merry-go-round.