To be honest, I’m just as surprised as you are. My friend Joe, from Scout Leather Co., has been telling me for months that I should make a top. My response was always, “I make tools, not toys.” But I was intrigued. Who doesn’t like tops, right?

One afternoon I had a few hours to play around on the lathe. I had no plan, I was just cutting a top free-hand on the lathe. No measurements, no design drawings. Instead of cutting a cone for the tip, I dug around in an old project box and came up with a ruby sphere I’d bought for another job. The first time I spun the top it was obvious that I’d created something totally different in performance and physics from anything I had seen before.

I showed the prototype to a few people and the most common response was, “Wait, it’s still spinning? Are you sure? It doesn’t look like it’s moving. There is no way it’s still spinning.” No one else had seen anything like it either. I thought that was pretty awesome, and I believe awesome is worth sharing.

- Jason Hui