Well, life can be grand sometimes smile emoticon Without dragging you all into my baggage, I have some hopefully good news! I am making tops! Stems tonight, and will have a finished top Thursday night! These will be 2 piece and have a SS, copper and bronze stem option and a SS, copper and bronze collar option. I do have ceramic and carbide ball options as seen below. Carbide is on the left and is much more silver compared to the charcoal color of ceramic. ZERO difference in spin time between the two. I am giving you the option for cosmetic reasons only. You will not notice any other difference than that.
$125 plus $5 domestic and $10 international shipping. I am not taking orders on this thread and am not posting a build thread. I will post a thread once I have one of each completed on Thursday night and take orders then. This will be like nothing I have made before and “should” be another very long spinner.
The winners of the spin contest will receive this top model! Here is a section view of what I have so far so if you cut it in half it would look like this:
9/25/15
I FOUND IT! It was hiding all last night and today but I found it. Had to look hard for it this time. Coming up with new original stuff can be difficult at times I tell ya. Amazing how all of a sudden it just comes together and you know it is right.
Just a heads up, material combinations are SS, Copper and Bronze for collar and SS, copper and Bronze for stems. I will make to order until I get caught up then I will make a few extras after that. I will be running tonight and tomorrow. I will post up a new thread once I get one of each completed. I am guessing that will be around 6:30 central time. That is when you will post “in” and your material combination. I do not have a lot of time as I have a fundraiser tomorrow so you can help me out by posting in and material combination as soon as I post it. That way I know exactly how many and what to make.
$125 plus $5 domestic and $10 international shipping.
There is NO milling on the collar. I want this one to be real clean to give a variety to those that don’t like the milled look. I am really digging this one now. It should have a great spin time
Maybe instead of making of of each combo, I will just get one off and then create the order thread. Then I will just add pics of the combinations that are ordered as I make them. Yup, I talked myself into it so figure around 5:00PM central!
I have one bronze stem right now and will make a SS collar since it is chucked up. I will post a pic of that then set the stem machine up again and start filling orders. Going to be a long fun night! The prototypes were very smooth spinners and I expect the production run to be as well. These will be the smallest tops i have ever made at 1.1″ in diameter
Weight and looks. My original plan was to mill off some weight if it was too heavy but the milling just did not flow with the design. I made some drastic changes but I know this will look better and have more symmetry. Plus the weight should be really good for some sweet spin times 😀
9/25/15
OFFICIAL ORDER THREAD:
Two piece tops (collar and stem). Collar material options are copper, Stainless Steel and Bronze. Stem material is Copper, Stainless Steel and Bronze. Your choice of Carbide or Ceramic ball. To order, just respond to this post with the collar, stem and ball materials you want. I will then make it an message you in the next couple days with my paypal info and ship these on Monday! This is a limited run only. After tomorrow I will never make these again. Feel free to message me with any questions but I will be busy so bare with me!
$125 plus $5 domestic and $10 international shipping
Thanks all 😀
How do you hold this in the lathe once the two pieces have been joined to do the final machining of the stem?
The jaws are bored to the exact contour of the od of the collar
They are called soft jaws. These are aluminum pie jaws and VERY expensive.
So most makers assemble the materials then turn them down and cut it off. This makes it spin as perfect as possible. Then they clean up the cut-off end to make it look nice. I do it differently because it limits what I can do on the back side. I make the grip side of the stem complete, then make the first end of the collar which is the grip side. This gives me a lot of room to do whatever design I want. Then I run the opposite side of the collar and press the stem in and then finish that end and put the ball in. Problem with my way is that the stem has to be pressed in perfect or the stem will wobble. It is very tricky and gives me fits. Anytime you hear about me having problems, that is the reason. It is a trade off and I have gotten pretty good and the technique but I still have a lot of scrap. I had 8 out of 50 in the last run but that was my fault as I had skipped an important prep step to the stem before assembly. Once I fixed that, the rest were right.
9/26/15
Here they all are!
I like the bronze over SS the best. The bronze just looked really good to me.
9/27/15
If you replied to the Official Order Thread, please read:
EVERYONE that replied to that thread got exactly what they ordered! Things went very smooth so I was able to make all of them. That is not always the case. So instead of messaging everyone, you can just make your PayPal payment to Rich@drop-n-stay.com ($125 plus $5 domestic and $10 international) and message me with the address you want it shipped to. This would help me out greatly as there was a lot ordered and I have a busy weekend. I have everyone’s packaged for shipping tomorrow that has paid and I will be doing more packaging tonight! If you have any questions, just message me or post here and I will respond.
THANK YOU again for everything, you all rock 😀
Prototypes
