derti

RELEASE INFORMATION

Release DATE 11 JULY 2021

Sold direct AND VIA YOYOEXPERT, SPINGEAR

Retail 329.99 USD

RAW TITANIUM

65 MADE

Diameter 53mm, Width 37mm, Gap 4.4mM

Weight 63.1G

M4 x 8mm axle

CONCAVE C bearinG

19MM TYPE 40 LANDING PADS RESPONSE

THE ELUSIVE GENIUS

I first spoke to Russell Andert, the maker of the dert and its various iterations, in November 2020. It was challenging to get hold of him, given that he has (by choice) decided not to jump on the social media bandwagon like everyone else. He literally has zero online presence. With the help of Andre Boulay of YoYoExpert, I managed to contact Russell via email. After a few back and forths, a Zoom conversation followed.

Russell is a machinist himself and one hell of a genius yo-yo designer (more on this later). Back in the day, he machined his yo-yos using leftover metal bars using a CNC mill. Conversely, other brands tended to make their yo-yos on a CNC lathe. What is the difference, you might ask? Put simply, the cutting tool moves in a mill while the raw material moves in a lathe. With the raw material turning, it is much easier to make a perfectly concentric yo-yo. Making a playable yo-yo on a mill is a challenging endeavour; just ask One Drop (their first yo-yo, the Project was made this way.) Due to the lack of raw materials, derts were made in tiny quantities. People love them, and they rarely pop up for sale on yo-yo forums. Today, Russell is still a machinist pondering about unique ways to make yo-yos.

Russell agreed to collaborate with RSO on our first Zoom call, after I pitched to him my vision for the collaboration and showed him RSO’s past projects. He revealed that he had previously turned several people down. I was extremely fortunate! Collaborating with Russell was an absolute breeze. I felt he was unequivocal in his thoughts and direction for the project, and he never fails to meet the deadlines set.

We actually completed the our collaboration project at the beginning of 2021 but I had to release it later due to various RSO projects already planned.

BEAUTY IN SIMPLICITY

The design of the various dert releases, starting from the first 6061 aluminium dert in 2006, through the mini iterations of the dert (the baby, eli and KC, for example), to the legendary 7075 aluminium dert in 2008, had straightforward designs. They all had organic shapes with reasonably high walls, primarily inspired by the Duncan Freehand, one of Russell’s favourite yo-yos of all time. Being the inquisitive machinist Russell is, he had most recently meddled around with more unique designs such as the Pop-A-dert, a bimetal design that can open beer bottles. He talks about it in a YouTube feature with Doc Pop below.

The standard dert shape essentially consists of a single arc at the catch zone and another arc in the hub joined with a straight line at the rims. Even the signature dert nipple is a simple cylindrical shape. The dert logo engraving on the nipple is the stock RomanS font from AutoCAD, a program both Russell and I are very familiar with.

From the start, we were in agreement that we would do a titanium yo-yo and to stick to the minimalist design philosophy of the dert series. Choosing which model to remake in titanium took us a while due to the number of models he had made, but we eventually settled on the mid-sized OG dert.

The OG dert design went through multiple iterations (Russell himself cannot even remember how many). The OG dert started as a 6061 aluminium, 52 mm, 58.5g yo-yo. After a few refinements, it became what Russell thought was the “best” version made out of 7075 aluminium, with a diameter of 53 mm and weighing 68g. The 7075 version was also the biggest run he had ever made. This 7075 version was the starting point of the titanium dert (which we affectionately call derti).

The response groove had to be modernised. We also felt that some weight reduction (we decided on about 63g) would make the yo-yo play better. It merely took me 5 minutes to thin down the walls of the 7075 dert CAD Russell sent me to arrive at the derti design. Fun fact: Russell had himself made a small run of 4 titanium versions of the dert back in the day, but it weighed 72g and is unacceptable by today’s standards.

We were extremely pleased with the prototypes and did not make any design changes to the production version. The resultant yo-yo plays in a sweet spot between floaty and solid. I would go further and say that is the best playing RSO to date. You would have to throw it to realise the beauty in its simplistic design.

THE ART OF EUPHEMISM

The customer base of RSO has always been slightly older. Both Russell and I wanted to do something more suggestive with the artwork for a more mature audience. We thought it was a fun idea to have a simple-looking yo-yo and artwork with mature innuendos, a play on the “derti” name.

There was only one person I had in mind to do the artwork - Jason Week. It took us a few weeks to brainstorm the different components of the artwork.

A box art look-n-find certificate comes with every derti - can you identify all of the words and their related art? Jason also added a few hidden “69s” in the artwork for good measure, so start hunting when you receive your yo-yo!

WHAT’S IN THE BOX

BOX ART LOOK-N-FIND Certificate of authenticity

DERTI ENAMEL PIN

A PAIR OF 19MM CYAN TYPE 50 LANDING PADS RESPONSE

BLUE STRING