The TV movie Yo-Yo

[Terrasolo]

I've recently made another Doctor Who prop discovery. I say "recently", however I actually ID'd this prop in 2014, although it's taken six years to find one! Sort of, I wasn't exactly searching every day. I discovered this around the same time that I had ID'd two of the Fourth Doctor's Yo-Yos (the yellow Lumar Championship and the Donald Duck).

The Yo-Yo used by the Seventh and Eighth Doctor in the TV movie turned out to be a No-Jive Mandala YoYo made by Tom Kuhn. As the Tom Kuhn yo-yos were all made in natural wood and had laser engraved text and markings, the props department had to fill in the center details/text to remove the branding, and then they painted it gold and black. So in this thread, I'll detail how I did mine, which in fairness was an easy mod.



Disclaimer 1: I also replicated the hospital tag on the bag, however it is not completely accurate, due to a lack of good source material, that said some of it is accurate, and a bit weird at that.

Disclaimer 2: Yes, I am aware that I used the Original Series Seventh Doctor pocket watch and not Sylvester's TVM pocket watch. I mainly threw it in for effect.

[Terrasolo]

Okay, so the first step was finding the actual Yo-Yo, as I detailed above, I knew what it was for a number of years now - a No-Jive Mandala YoYo made by Tom Kuhn - but I only found one for sale in December of 2019.



To be honest, I had considered not modifying this prop as the stained wood is really a great piece, but I wanted the yo-yo for years, so my first step was to remove the text and markings in the center. I stopped by my local crafts shop and got this Rust-oleum wood filler.



I then filled in the areas, using a piece of plasticard as a spatula, and then sanded the excess off to make the filler flush with the top layer of the yo-yo. Here you can also see the fully dismantled yo-yo.





After that, I then used 400 grit sandpaper to both smooth the enter surface and to remove the staining so that the primer could have a better surface to cover.

[Terrasolo]

Now that the weather was a bit more forgiving, I was ready to paint. I wanted to use Rust-oleum 2X paint so that I could bypass the primer step, however the only gold paint they make in 2X is a full metallic and I needed an old fashion gold paint, like would have been used in the 90's. So I stuck with the brand and got a primer as well, and some testers semi-gloss black paint and thinner for the project.



Naturally I primed first and then lightly sanded again with 400 grit to smooth the rush finish of the primer.





Next I painted the gold layer, two layers for good measure.

[Terrasolo]

Then once the gold had set, I moved onto the black accents, which was a bit painstaking; but worth it.



And I polished up the silver hexagons to get rid of the larger scratches.



And then assembled!

[the_doctor]

Lovely work and well done for spotting it!