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[Daveid]

I'll go into detail later, touchscreen typing is getting tiresome... if anyone who knows anything about these feels like discussing what they know, feel free to talk.


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[ta0]

Wow! Are those string/super-glue tops?   

Welcome back! 

[Daveid]

Yes they are string and superglue,  they're the best tops I've ever made, also the easiest to make, literally thanks to johnm, I had a vague idea and told him I might be able to do this if I had some unfinished top forms of hdpe and he sent me one of each size... the three ive made are from the smallest,  second smallest and the middle sized (3in diameter) forms, the ones I made from the smallest and the 3in diameter I used butchers twine as the first layer, the second smallest I used a "cabled cord" as the core layer, it's thinner and so the one made from the smaller form is barely larger than it...



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[Daveid]

I'm working (more thinking than working) on a balancing system for the larger one with a coil of wire that has a heavy spot stuffed inside the top... it works but I need a more stiff connection to the top, right now I have it at a sweet spot but if it drops while spinning or if I cold stop catch it from the air the coil shifts cuz momentum and lack of friction, I mark the sweet spot (not shown in pic), balancing was easy because you just slide the coil around the interior of the top to adjust, no removal and re application like with putty (which wont work because of exposed cotton on the interior of the top).


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[johnm]

David’s technique is really quite unique in the hobby top-making circle.  Other than Mark Hayward’s high tech 3D printed top (link = decapitop) and a few other printed finger spinners, as far as I know the approach with string and superglue is the only additive technique being used to make tops.  Most of us start with some block of raw material and remove (subtract) the bits that don’t look like a top using knives and chisels, etc.  But David’s approach is to glue string on to string by hand in just the right places to create his tops.  Remarkable!  (I suppose technically that injection molding and casting are additive techniques but I think of them differently somehow)

Thanks for sharing David.

A compilation of earlier works in this style is in this thread link = earlier string tops

[ta0]

I don't understand. If you are using the HDPE as forms, you cannot remove them once you build your string top.   

The coil of wire is an original way of balancing but it would seem to me that you can only control were around the circumference you are adding weight. Sometimes you would need to adjust the height where you are adding the weight and that would not be very easy, I am guessing.

Anyway, the swirled look is gorgeous. And the material so unique that they are already valuable as collector/art items. But the kicker is that I bet they play very well.

Great work!

[lincolnrick]

You're an amazing builder David.  I hope I can see these next year in KC.

[Daveid]

I'm at my parents' house for Christmas so i get to use a real computer with a keyboard... now I can type this out:

so last year as several of you may know Alan and Neff and I went to the Whirled Spintop Festival, we met johnm and saw all his fantastical stuff, i got one of his beautiful standard sized tops and traded an old top body without a tip for a 5in hdpe one, well after the festival, I got a package from johnm and i don't know the exact origin of all of that happening but i guess he and Neff wanted me to get some lathe experience so johnm sent me a gorgeous hdpe top in the 4inch diameter size without a tip and without it being cored out and they wanted me to drive over to Neff's house and use his lathe, i think i said something to john like "you know I'm just going to put a bolt in it and build a string and superglue tip right?" and he basically said that was fine with him... anyways nearly a year goes by and then this year's whirled top festival happens and then i get the most beamingly happy and thanking message from Mike (the Earl of whirl) thanking me for the top i donated (the form i traded to johnm which he made a tip for and gave to mike) and telling me how everyone wanted to spin it and i started thinking "oh yeah... i never got around to making a tip for that 4in hdpe top" so i got right on that, made a tip for it, and then for good measure i made a tip for the standard size top too, just plugging a bolt in and building up a tip and filing it into shape, well at a certain point i glued the bolt into the top, and unscrewed it like it wasn't glued at all, i had already known that superglue doesn't really stick so great to hdpe, but had no idea that it was going to be that easy to unscrew if i glued the bolt in place so, i got really excited and i was telling johnm about it sending messages through the board here and i think i said something about maybe trying to build a top around the four inch or the five inch one, at some point i took the tip off my five inch one and found it to be of a different shape than the others, the steel of the tip goes into the body just a bit... so i was mentioning that it'd be nice to have unfinished forms for the different sized tips... and i said something about if i did make a top off of one of them and if it worked as well as i wanted it to based on thinking that the superglue would come right off then I'd be bugging him to make me tops as large as he can go with hdpe, well... at some point i tried making one off the standard size top and found that it did stick a little bit, and "a little bit" spread over an entire top makes for a not so easy removal particularly when you have to unscrew the top from the form to get it out (i peeled more than one attempt from the top), i don't recall if i had the idea or if it was his suggestion to use plastic wrap or maybe it was Neff... also i think by this time john had already cast me one of every size and was about to send them to me, so i waited and stopped abusing my beautiful tops...
there were other kinks that got worked out but liberal usage of plastic wrap and just gluing straight to it starting at the bolt with it screwed in, i glue string up the form wrapping it and gluing as i go until it's at the outermost diameter of the top, then i unscrew it and put plastic wrap over the crown of the top and work from that end the shape that johnm's tops are very easy for extending the crown (i could make a tube if i wanted to of pretty much any length but that's a different side thought and this is already way too wordy), once you work from the crown down to the outermost diameter of the top then you just pop that off, rip off as much plastic wrap as you want (as long as you have cotton touching cotton at the seam you're good, and glue the two halves together...
for the big one i then put another layer of horizontal butcher's twine around it just for a tiny little bit of extra strength, after the second layer i rough filed it a lot to get exposed cotton (for the outer layer to have a better bond to) and to work down the bumpy nature of the butcher's twine
...horizontal all the way through is a structural flaw, but i think the exterior layer of string which is embroidery floss going in every which direction should be stable enough for the smaller tops... when i get around to the five and seven inch diameter tops i plan on putting either a layer that will be butchers twine running vertically (which would be a lot of work and painful to cover up because it would look really cool) or I'm thinking of also i could wrap it in cheesecloth a few wraps should work great since it's fibers are loose enough that a few layers put over one another and glued together should make for a good bond, a shirt would probably work fine but i worry about parts not bonding to lower layers)...

I don't understand. If you are using the HDPE as forms, you cannot remove them once you build your string top.   

The coil of wire is an original way of balancing but it would seem to me that you can only control were around the circumference you are adding weight. Sometimes you would need to adjust the height where you are adding the weight and that would not be very easy, I am guessing.

Anyway, the swirled look is gorgeous. And the material so unique that they are already valuable as collector/art items. But the kicker is that I bet they play very well.

Great work!

the coil is at a "doing this on a whim" kinda level to see if it would work at all, I'm also thinking about running a groove or possibly several grooves on the interior of the top and having maybe spring steel coils that would rest in them with weighted ends so that the weight could be shifted in various ways at various levels, there's too many ways to do it to pin it down to just one thought, this was just the easiest thing for me to do without having to go buy stuff the weight can slide around and its at a point that i can stop and play, i have to reset the coil almost every throw but it still works well enough to think about more of the same thought.
and my fingertips are too sore from picking glue off of them to really jump in on a lot of work really fast so it's going to continue to be a slow working process... don't get me wrong i wear vinyl gloves but they die quickly sometimes... i really wish i could just buy a box of replacement thumb and forefinger for these gloves because those die the quickest (after all the string is in place i file and fill, err file down the bumps and fill in the cracks with more superglue and just repeat that fore several hours)
another idea is to run wire all through the entirety of the body of the top when I'm making it and then balance it with magnets in the interior...

okay I'm not rereading that again sorry for all the grammatical errors and run-on sentences.

[cecil]

Thanks for sharing. I would like to see a video on how you make them, and how they play. Nice looking tops.

[Daveid]

sorry no process vids at this time, but here's a more thorough look at them:

[ta0]

Thanks a lot of the detailed description of the method and the story behind it.
Now I understand that they are made from to parts glued together and with extra layers added afterwards.

I imagine that you use threads of different colors to obtain the surface pattern. Do you build most of the top thickness by laying the string following a pattern or crisscrossing at random? When you get to the external surface, do you lay the string to get specific effects (a line of this color, a swirl of that color)?

[Daveid]

Currently for the patterning I'm just playing around with it a bit... slowly figuring out what looks good and trying different things, each one I'm more proud of than the previous so I think im on the right track... embroidery thread comes in every colour I could hope for and I'm kinda stuck with a "playing around" mentality since they aren't always labeled and im kinda colorblind

[the Earl of Whirl]

Good old johnm.  He has a nice way with people and inspiring them.  I am so glad you are inspired now, also, Daveid.  Your tops look great and I am thrilled to hear they are your best yet.  Terrific!!!  What a great Christmas message.

[Dick Stohr]

Well done, MORE MORE!!!!!

[johnm]

and my fingertips are too sore from picking glue off of them to really jump in on a lot of work really fast so it's going to continue to be a slow working process... don't get me wrong i wear vinyl gloves but they die quickly sometimes... i really wish i could just buy a box of replacement thumb and forefinger for these gloves because those die the quickest

I don't know if latex would be any better or worse than vinyl but "finger cots" are available primarily in latex on Amazon or even at Walmart or Walgreens.  One advantage of these if you do not need full hand protection is that most of your hand is out in the air not getting extra sweaty trapped in a glove.



Jewelers use rubber finger cots to protect their fingers from abrasion while machine polishing items but you may loose a lot of touch sensation using something this substantial.



Perhaps you could use a set of polyethylene tweezers to handle the glued string instead of your fingers.