Let’s not conflate two things, though. I know you’re not saying “cleaning your bearing breaks them,” but that’s what it sounds like. Just wanted to clarify for the people who may not understand: what you’re saying is that it’s hard to mess up “Just play through it,” and easier to mess up the cleaning process. At least that’s how I understand it.
I think there’s not much to cleaning, but sure, newcomers often put too much lube or clean with the wrong thing. That’s not really a knock against the idea of cleaning, though. If you read properly and follow the instructions, you’re either going to mess up once or twice in your whole time as a yoyoer, or you may NEVER mess up!
It’s not like people are going to come here and start a thread, “I’m so glad I cleaned my bearing, it works great now!” because that’s the expected outcome or they already suspected they might have a dead bearing and the cleaning didn’t help… which is still an expected outcome.
At the same time, you also see time after time “my bearing doesn’t play well anymore,” and many of these people have already tried breaking it in either overtly or because they played the “off” bearing for weeks before finally getting sick of the poor performance. At that point in time, they might ask for advice about cleaning it… and in the cases where that works, that’s the end of it. In cases where it doesn’t work, the bearing was probably broken before they ever tried cleaning it.
Anyhow, I ramble. Cleaning works for a lot of people. It works for me and has certainly never HURT a bearing.
No that is what I was saying.
I have seen a direct correlation in people cleaning their bearing and and people who have bearing that brake.
I am not sure the science behind it.
How ever when I cleaned my bearings over time I had bearing that would just flat out die. A couple that literally fell apart. As in the insides fell out of the bearing. balls cage and all. None of these happened after the cleaning but down the road.
The ones that didn’t fall apart I had to re-polish the races and what not to get them going. (Shields mod.) I think they call what happens gulling.
Since I stopped cleaning bearings and only lube, I have never had a bearing break totally. And when I say I stopped. what I am saying is unless something sticky like sticker residue from pads gets in the bearing I don’t clean them. (maybe once every 5 years or so.) All mine work great never die and I put lots of hours on them. Some time ago the terrapin guy was saying how long a yoyo sleeps on a drop with his bearing. just being curious I tried it with one of my normal throws.(Mg) and I got the same results, on my bearing where I only lube.
So that was exactly my point. I think some how for some reason cleaning a bearing seems to lead to bearing failure. Improper cleaning seems to lead too instant failure. So I just go ahead and stay away from the whole mess if I can. Plus it just seems to be useless since I get the same or better results from lubing and playing them out. With the added benefit of getting a bit smoother each time I lube up gain.
Just as a small added note I am talking a small number of the large number of bearing I have had in my life, fall into this conversation. I tend to use one yoyo with one bearing for very long periods of time compared to the general yoyo community. Most yoyos I have I don’t ever use enough to maintain the bearing once, before I trade or give them away. So I am talking about both my experience and those of people I know well(My yoyo club.), and from posts on the forum.
I agree with what studio said here. There seems to be some sorta’ meshing process’s when breaking in a bearing that is lost when you just clean the bearing.
