Tired of excessive string tension? Read here!

*try this “modification” at your own risk.

I have always loved doing horizontal finger spins, ending them with the beautiful “tornado” bind. One thing that has always bothered me however is the excessive amount of tension I would have afterwards. I was trying to come up with some way to get around this. For the longest time I attempted to come up with a way to release this tension near the bearing, then it hit me: a bearing devise at the slipknot end of the string instead. I drew up a design and talked to my dad about it. As he looked at it he said “there is something for fishing very similar to this”. When we were shopping today we picked up what he was talking about. The product used is shown below.

I went with the heaviest grade I saw. I assumed if it could withstand the forces of a fish and human pulling back and forth on it, a yoyo would be nothing. I know nothing about fishing so have 0 idea what they are for but the design was very similar to what I was looking for.
This was added between the slipknot and the sting connected to the yoyo as shown below.

I made sure to triple knot each spot just to help prevent the yoyo from ending up through my tv. Afterwards I added the grip off of a mechanical pencil to lessen the amount of marks made on the yoyo from impacting it. It looks like the figure below.

It was done and ready to use! So how well did it work?
Without the swivel device:

With the swivel device:

I was pretty impressed! As you can see though, it’s not perfect. There is still substantial tension on the string. However much of this tension is gone after doing a few of practically any trick.
A few other imperfections would include the possibility of leaving marks on the yoyo, a high increase in weigh in an odd place on the string, and the device getting in the way of some tricks where that particular area of the string is needed.

Let me know what you guys think! Any ways you would improve it?

Hope you guys liked this little write up on the “modification” or addition to my yoyo setup! I hope a few people will give it a try and let me know how it turned out for them!

That’s cool! I like how you found a problem and tried to solve it and it worked

Thanks! I would have spent soooo much more time trying to build one if my dad had not mentioned that swivel thing to me

I think I’ll try to make one with a ball bearing connected to the string I’ll see how it goes.

This was actually a pretty big thing a few years back. I don’t remember who but another member discovered this a few years back and a few people actually started using it. I guess it’s kind of died off, I had totally forgotten about it.

EDIT: Found it! http://yoyoexpert.com/forums/index.php/topic,59524.240.html

Well… there is a counterweight that has a bearing in it so you don’t have to worry about tension. Which is nice. But the counterweight is like $25

That’s really for 5a though. I wouldn’t really want to be playing 1a with a die in my hand

Same. Who would?!

Thanks for the link! Kinda sad that I wasn’t the first to think of it though

Sam Lopez I think it was made some really sick ones that worked very well.

Only $8.

I was looking at other stores and they sell it for twice the price thx garrett

I hope you learned your lesson, shop yoyoexpert.