schalicto.com

I had the chance to play with The Rok by FurphYo today.  This a yo-yo that needs some work.  There is nothing about The Rok that I like. 

The Rok is an undersized and over-wide “high end” aluminum yo-yo.  It’s available with a coating of anodization or powdercoating, the version that I used was the anodized.  The stock bearing is a standard large bearing and it uses flowable silicone response.

Let’s start with the anodization.  It’s just about the worst looking anodization that I have seen, the colors are not very strong and the yo-yo appears to have no sanding or blasting before the anodization process.  Look at the (terrible) picture to the right and you’ll see the inside of the inner rim, notice where the anodization has warn off?  That happened the first time the owner of this yo-yo did a inner rim grind.  In the picture you can also see the machining lines.

The biggest problem that the yo-yo has is the relationship between the bearing seat, response system and gap width.  You’ll notice in the two pictures of the bearing in this article that the bearing is seated deeper in the yo-yo than the ridge that starts the gap.  Since the bearing is seated so deep in the yo-yo it makes the gap on the yo-yo awkwardly small.  The main thing that this yo-yo needs to fix the problem is for the bearing seat to be flush with the inside wall of the yo-yo… but that would make the yo-yo even wider than it already is so the best option might be to junk the design and take what can be learned from this design back to the drawing board.

I have talked to David Furphy on the Yo-Yo Wiki Podcast and he seems like a good guy but I take issue with a price tag of $80 on this yo-yo that is pretty much unusable.

-Josh

Posted on April 14th, 2007 by schalicto
Filed under: Josh Rants