How to Improve Yo-Yo Axles

Yo-Yo Trick

Okay. We're going to talk about fixed-axle yo-yo's more specifically right now. Like we said before, fixed-axle means that you've got a metal post coming through. Sometimes it's wood, sometimes it's metal. And the yo-yo comes back around that metal axle. And that is what the string is riding on. When you go to a dollar store and buy a yo-yo, typically you're going to end up with one of these. They're not going to work that great. So if you're watching this video series and all you have is a fixed-axle yo-yo, you might want to think about upgrading. It doesn't mean you can't learn some basic tricks on it. And I just want to talk about that real quick. With the fixed axle, it's important to check how the string is connected. A lot of times, when you get one of these, what they'll do when they manufacture them is they'll actually take the string and they'll tie a knot. They'll literally just take the string, tie a knot at the end of the yo-yo. And what happens when that happens is, you know, it's not going to sleep. There's going to be a knot, it's going to get to the end, shoot straight back to your hand. And that's not really what you want. You want a yo-yo that's going to be able to sleep. What you want to do is make sure that you get a string that has an open loop at the end so that it goes right around the end of the yo-yo like so. So even though it's a fixed-axle, that string can still be allowed to spin around it, and that way the yo-yo will still be able to sleep. You can wind it up, give it a throw, and you'll see that even with a fixed-axle, you can still get it to sleep and come up and down. It's a little bit trickier sometimes. You might have to have a little bit stronger of a throw, but you can still get it to come back up and down and even sometimes do some fancy tricks. Another trick to it, if you're really trying to learn some of these tricks with a fixed-axle yo-yo, sometimes people will put different types of things on the string to help make it more slippery. Cornstarch has been used, I've heard, by some people. Another thing you can do is put some graphite around the post. It might help move the string around a little bit better. But all together, at this point, if you're actually learning the tricks on this site, I highly recommend moving up to a transaxle yo-yo or a ball bearing yo-yo, which we're going to be talking about next.

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