-My New FAVORITE Plastic Balisong! - Tay Flipper Review.

Tay Flipper, a hardly knower. So we recently looked at some 3D printed balisongs on Etsy and they were not great. Were they, Brandon? Like, some of them were pretty good. The fidget mech was really dope. This is a different category. The Tay Flipper is a balisong that was designed from the ground up for flippability. At the same time that we received this, we actually also got this from Zippy Balisong. This is the zipper, but right now there's actually a V2 of the zipper being worked on. So we're going to update when that comes out and make a review of that. But for now, oh, oh, Cycloid. There will be a review of this. Much like 3D printed plastic, these are other balisongs made of plastic that are not 3D printed. So you have the Squiddy and then you have the Squiddy B. And both of these are shockingly competent balisongs. Honestly, the whole idea of 3D printed balisongs is relatively new. But the idea of plastic balisongs was created back in the day by Squid Industries. Nobody really believed that it could be done until Squid made the Squiddy. We do know it is something you can achieve, but has the Tay Flipper done that yet? Well, today we intend to find out utilizing our top of the art state of the edge scoring system. 10 out of 10. We can't do that again. We gotta, that was it. Now let's use that scoring system to figure out whether or not you should buy the Tay Flipper. But you know what you should buy? Our merch at willhirsch.gay. You can get stuff like this guy. This is our brand new pouch. And you can put your Tay Flipper in the pouch. You can just wear it all around the town and be so happy. But Mr. Willhirsch.gay. Don't forget about the hats. Oh, the hats. We got hats now. Yeah. So we have fully nice embroidered custom hats. So you got the embroidery. The embroidery that's got the signature on the back. Also shirt. Shirt. The Tay Flipper comes in a relatively plain cardboard box. But what is inside is actually shockingly impressive. You see Tay came up with a system to have a custom 3D printed insert. That holds the balisong nice and securely inside the box. And utilizes the space to the best of the ability. If you get a balisong with a custom handle design like this one or mine. Which does cost extra by the way. It will come with a special little tool. I'm a little tool. This little tool is honestly a pretty well designed torx driver. And it comes with a torx bit. And so because of that. While it does have the ability to be a really outstanding experience. It's not that outstanding. Therefore we have given it a score of 6 out of 10. Which is slightly above average but not crazy. When it comes to the tuning of this balisong. It's actually shockingly easy. The balisong runs on a washer system. And you just kind of tighten it until it swings good. That's all there is to it. Honestly it's actually even better than the squiddy. The squiddy has a bit of a problem where the screws just like to come loose really easily. Like I can even do it with my fingers right now. I'm literally loosening the screw out of the squiddy. This one doesn't do that. The screws actually stay in place like really well. And so yeah my experience overall has been pretty good. The pivots are easy to adjust because they don't come loctited out of the box. They just come normally. And honestly I don't even think they really need loctite that much. But here's something to note about plastic balisongs specifically. While the true play is only about that much. You can easily make it seem like it has more than a handles worth of play. And the reason for this is because the entire thing is flexible. Even if you get perfect tolerances on a plastic balisong. It will never not have tap. Hello there. It's future Brandon here. An additional thing that lowered the score was that the way Tay had to design and build the Tay Flipper. The screws and barrels are all press fit in a specific way. That can make disassembly and repairs much more challenging than a standard metal balisong. Since this makes the screws and barrels quite difficult to remove. Even with a lot of force. He had to do this in the name of reducing the tap as much as he could. But I thought that that was worth noting. Also there's a super detailed maintenance page on Tay Flipper's website. That's really really good. Along with a video that tells you exactly how to tune specifically the Tay Flipper. So don't be like me and make sure you check those out. Okay love you bye. And so we've decided to give this thing a score of 5 out of 10. Which is average and is actually pretty good. As it's one point ahead of the Squiddy. And now for durability. Well we kind of had to look into that for these. Because it doesn't initially seem like it'll be the most durable thing in the world. There's only one way to find out. Will hit me. I want you to hit me. I want you to hurt me. Hurt me. No. I need more. Thankfully though both Tay Flipper and Zippy have shown that the durability of their products are shockingly good. Tay on their Instagram has an incredible number of videos where they were either stabbing into the snow. And like climbing up a hill with this thing. Or throwing it down on the concrete even in a skate park. It survived just fine. Something to note here is that versus the Squiddy. You know if you drop it there's a potential that it could crack and shatter in half. With these guys there's a couple differences there. First of all the blade is much thicker. But also the material itself is built in such a way that if force is applied to it. It's much more likely to flex than it is to shatter. And this is just due to the nature of 3D printing in general. But just know that it makes for a shockingly durable product. So we give it a 5 out of 10. Which is average and is on par with some of the metal knives that we've rated. Alright so now we move on to flipping. Yahoo! Honestly the flipping aspect is shockingly good. The balisong itself is relatively large. Especially compared to the Squiddy. And even when you compare it to the largest live blade in my collection. The Kershaw Lucha. It's just about the same size. But I think that actually helps it in terms of the flipping. You see with a plastic balisong it's so light. And the center of mass is so condensed. That by having the long handles it brings the mass all the way out to the end. Which means that it swings very nicely through all the tricks you want to try. Everything from aerials to rollovers to pretty much anything else I could throw at it. This thing took great. And I was impressed with it every time I flipped it. I was also impressed. We went back and forth on how much better of a flipping experience this was compared to this. And the thing we talked about a lot is of course there's nothing on these handles really that's going to provide any grip. And with this you have the jimping and you have everything machined into the middle of it. And it gave it a substantially better grip. And so for somebody like me that's learning how to flip. Having like such a substantial amount of grip. And something like a trick I need to learn how to do is ladders. And I realized I could pretty easily learn how to do a ladder on this. Whereas if I were to try to learn that on a squiddy I don't think I would have nearly as good of a time. So I guess now that I've said what I want to say I guess it's time to make out. I'm not gay. Oh Brandon, Brandon, Brandon. The Tay Flipper gets a score of 7 out of 10 in terms of flipping. Which is honestly really impressive. That's a good score. This is an honestly shockingly good flipper. Alright so in terms of the availability it was a bit of a hard one for us to score. Tay Flipper is relatively new to the game. Especially when it comes to making balisongs. And so there's not really a track record for us to follow here. However according to Tay they're trying to live up to doing weekly drops of this thing. Which is pretty awesome. They're trying to look for around what 20 to 30 units per drop. Making balisongs isn't even his full time job. If it becomes his full time job he could have even more. And so because it'll be available every week it's not quite as many as Squid Industries can produce. And obviously it's nothing like the Squiddy which is available all the time. But it's still pretty impressive. And I think that warrants an impressive score of 7 out of 10. Now that score could change in the future. And if it does we will update the balisong score list accordingly. We now come to the value score. Value is inherently something that's hard to gauge. But with this at a price of $65 for the base model. And then $110 for the more expensive custom model with the engraving. We give it 8 out of 10. And the reason for this high score even though it is a relatively expensive piece. Is because of the handmade single person nature. Similar to how we gave the alien from Stitch Steel a 10 out of 10 in value. Because technically you're barely paying him for the amount of work he's doing for that. It's a similar scenario with Tay Flipper. This thing has fantastic value because it's being made on such a small scale. By a single person doing all of the work. Similar to MachineWise. MachineWise gets a 10 out of 10 value in all of his stuff. Because of the prices he's able to put that at. I think one of the big things is of course with something like a Squiddy. We watched those being made. It's not like mass manufactured like crazy. But it's a factory that's working through making a ton of these. But this is like chemically welded together. Yeah so the Squiddy you have 1, 2, 3, 4 press fit parts. And then this. You have with this 3 press fits. This needs to be chemically welded together. There's another ball bearing in there. This needs to be press fit into there. Then you have all of this post processing that's happening when you get the more expensive model. Yeah even though something like a Squiddy is technically cheaper and it's still plastic. This is a much more handmade kind of thing. A lot of people just think oh what it's just plastic. Plastic isn't expensive. No there's a lot of work that's having to go into this. And he's providing a bunch of different colors. These were sent to us for free. And this was actually customized. Tay didn't even tell me he was going all out with the black and red. It's great obviously. Yeah honestly it's a shockingly good value. So we do give an 8 out of 10. And I think it's worth it. I aim to be at least an 8 out of 10. Just in life. What would you say? Eh. **** you. I don't think I can take any more of this. Finally we come to the final score. Which is a 38 out of 60. You can see all the individual scores right here. 38 out of 60 puts this thing at the same level as the Squiddy. Which is pretty cool. However I think if you actually look at the individual scores. Such as tuning and flipping and the durability. You'll actually find that the Tay Flipper scores in places that I think are more important. Higher than the Squiddy. So yes while the final score is the same between the two. Personally I like this one better. I'm really excited to see where all this stuff goes. Because the whole world of 3D printing bell songs is still pretty new. And there's more people doing it. But people that are doing it well are few and far between. Really cool story that I actually wanted to share. I was talking directly with Tay about this. And he said to me. Don't know if you knew but this whole thing started as a fluke lol. I just wanted to make a cute gift for my girlfriend. It looked good and flipped decently. As more people saw it and liked it. I just started making more. And then had the idea to start selling them eventually. Yeah so it started as just a very cute thing. You just wanted to make a gift for his girlfriend. And now here we are. And it's a pretty damn cool product. That's perfect. You've peaked. So long and thanks for all the fish. So sad that it should come to this. We try to warn you all but oh dear. But yeah that's pretty much it for the Tay Flipper. Obviously we really like this thing. But if you are excited to see more about 3D printed balisongs. Get ready for the Cycloid review. Which is coming very soon. Also in terms of cheap balisongs. We have this from Nibali's. This is the Morse. And cheap balisongs are getting good. We might have reached out to Nibali's. And said that their product could use a few improvements. You know. Not that I'm saying anything. But like. You know. Keep an eye out. Well thank you all for watching. I want to send a huge thank you to our Patreon supporters. What cool people. Look at all the names that we have for the Patreon supporters. They support us for just three bucks a month. And get access to all sorts of cool perks. The most important of which is getting videos like these days in advance of the public. So you get to see what we're making early. And that's pretty cool. One three dollar patron gives us more support than a thousand views on one of our videos. So it's kind of a big deal. But that's pretty much it for this one. Now if you'll excuse me. I'm tired of this grandpa. I don't want to dig no more holes. Let's tune in baby!