Precision spinning tops–also called pocket tops, or finger tops–are small and are meant to be held between thumb and fingers and spun with one flick.

My interest in tops goes back a long time, but not to my childhood, as I don’t remember having tops back then. I might have got my first top at the end of the last century. It was a little metal top from Germany. In 2017 I discovered machined metal tops with bearing spin points. This type of top first started being made late summer 2013. Thanks in part to Facebook, communities of both makers and buyer/collectors have sprung up and are quite healthy. I would recommend Pocket Top Talk as the best place to start looking for precision finger spun metal spinning tops on Facebook. There were over a hundred makers of precision spinning tops at the height of the craze that coincided with the fidget spinner craze, around 2017/18. There are over 5,000 members of Pocket Top Talk group, but perhaps only a couple thousand people who buy and collect metal spinning tops around the world. Makers and collectors come from all over the globe, but most are in the US.

Once I got interested in these new tops, I started making spin stations out of wood. Tops spin best on a slightly concave glass surface, and it’s convenient to hold the glass lens in a wooden “bowl”. It protects the glass, and looks good. I bought a lathe and started making spin stations, or what I call bowls (because they made the same way as wooden bowls, just with a shallower recess to hold the glass lens.) Here’s one of my favorite bowls:

Padauk spin base with 6″ double sided concave lens

I then started making tops myself, out of wood. Wood tops are very traditional, and maybe people will remember a wood top from their youth. Wood tops are often quite simple, made of one piece in a simple “ball and stick” shape. Like these:

Tops made by Dave Earle

Now I not only make my own wood and resin and sometimes metal tops, I continue to collect metal tops as well as wooden tops from other makers, acrylic resin tops, and glass tops. My collection has over 900 tops in it, with over 800 metal tops.

You can find me on Facebook at my Spin In Style group.