Wood anybody?

How do you do that?

1 Like

Waste not, want not… ;D

http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x274/EightPlus/Skilltoys/Picture002.jpg

http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x274/EightPlus/Skilltoys/Picture001.jpg

Rod Tsou made the spindles for me.

I’m starting to feel like a real slacker, I’ve never burned an axle or melted the string in all the time I’ve played wood yoyos. :frowning:

1 Like

Thanks everyone! Just ordered my first wooden fixed axle throw and a bunch of type 10 cotton strings. I went for the OUT Just For Fun Walnut. I hope it is a great choice, I’ll just have fun with it no matter what. :slight_smile:

1 Like

best way is to take a kind of dead cotton string, wind it around the new axle a couple of times (less than 3) and CAREFULLY pull it through the gap a few times. This effectively sands down the axle, but if you do it too hard, the friction will burn it and ruin it. But it’s a good way to break the axle in with friction so it tends to play more smoothly/consistently and lasts longer. Takes about a minute.

2 Likes

I understand that a soft wood will burn sooner, but which do you think plays better, a soft wood axle or a hard wood axle?
BTW, I have burned through a lot of string but never an axle.

Pun intended?

You should feel pretty good about doing slack on a wood fixie! ;D

I own a few of Stuart Crumps old No Jives, I have a pair of his loopers and the axles are concaved. no burns, but they were played so much they are no longer flat.

They play great! Just wish I was better at looping :frowning:

I did gyro flops on a wooden axle before, but burning or melting the string is pretty unheard of. Maybe it’s luck, maybe I play too ‘soft’. Unless you have actually said it, I wouldn’t even think that burning the axle is even possible, unless maybe you’re doing like multiple around the worlds as hard as you can.

What yoyo did you do those flops on?
Mostly yoyos with harder axles like walnut (the recent standard) are very hard to scorch because they are so smooth and pretty dense. Try doing a long combo on a No Jive (or even better, a Russell) and you will smell smoke pretty quick. :wink:

Also if it’s a yoyo you’ve played a lot, you take care of most of the wood imperfections anyway. It’s really just a new axle which is easy to destroy with friction. And even then we are t talking about cutting right through it - just burning a line/groove into it which increases contact area with the string and worsens play.

The only fixed axle I’ve ever been able to do a gyro flop on have been a couple of Colin’s yoyo’s, can’t remember which ones.

It was a custom made mahogany yoyo.

Just got my OUT Just For Fun and a bunch of YYE Type 10 Strings last Friday!
Played it through the weekend. When I put the string, I just looped it twice to the axle so I will have less sleep time. Haven’t tried the rubbing of wax at the end of the string yet. ;D

You can rub wax or lip balm on the end of the string, but really they just need to be broken in; it only takes a minute if you’re good at it. My OUT and TMBR yo-yos all have walnut axles and they are all unresponsive with a new string on them. The way I break in a new string is to do strong, one-handed windshield wipers continuously, allowing the yo-yo to sleep a long time on each regen until the yo-yo is tug responsive and plays perfectly. I used to use lip balm but I find it unnecessary now.

I just snagged the basecamp wooden yo, i havent used a decent wooden yo in forever!

Keep in mind that waxing it too much will make it responsive and whack your knuckles if you’re not careful.

The way you break in a wood axle is to take some thick packaging string (any string really, but the thick stuff works well), wrap it around the axle a couple of times, leaving about a foot on each end, and pulling it back and forth a few times until it feels smooth.

Thanks for the reminder! Just tried it last weekend, apply a small amount of burt’s bees wax and put the string as it is, no extra loops as I do before. It is now 100% tug responsive.

Though I am having a little problem with snap start. Sometimes it is good, sometimes it will just slip and go dead quickly. A few more play time and I will get it soon. ;D

Here is my newest, and is already growing to be my favorite. As some of you know Hildy Bros. started to make their Currier in a take-a-part design. The Currier was already one of my favorites. Luke made me a custom Currier out of oak that was originally a whisky barrel. So I reached out to him again and asked him if he could make me one of the take apart Currier’s with a gold finish, also gave him a weight I wanted. He nailed it!

Also, if you saw my post on Instagram, this was the yoyo I was waiting for. For some reason USPS kept sending it back and forth between IL & VA for 2 weeks, just back and forth, back and forth. So I joked with Luke that if he ever offers this finish he has to come up with some name that refers to the USPS fiasco ;D

Impressive!

Awesome!