Monkeyfinger released pictures of a custom anodizing job they did on a SPYY Radian Super Light, and it’s pretty crazy. I spoke with Ray from Monkeyfinger, and he gave me some more insight into the process of creating a one-of-a-kind piece like this. In case you didn’t see it already, Monkeyfinger opened up a custom anodization service on their site. With work like this, if you dig their yoyos it might really be worth the bucks to get a crazy one-of-a-kind job like this done.

Once we established what customer wanted, the first step was to completely blast the surface to give the surface a used, vintage texture. On a regular bead blast, the surface tends to keeps a bit of its shine but with this one we decided it hit it a bit harder to make sure it was nice and worn.

As you look at the yoyo, you’ll see multiple colours with multiple masking.  We laid out nine separate masks to capture different colours and effects. If you really look at the pictures you’ll see that each gear, cog, and piece of tin all have effects inside them. By carefully masking the yoyo and using a number of different visual effects on different layers, we were able to give each individual cog and element some real depth.  Then we finished off the whole piece with a micro splash yellow.

After the yoyo was finished, both Todd and myself didn’t think that it looked right and we opted to redo the background to make the part show more of a worn copper patina.  To pull it off we actually created a new technique from scratch that we’ve never previously heard of or tried.

In total, it was approximately 16 manufacturing steps to create this unique finish.