I got that dinged up DK in the mail and i am trying to get this thing repaired.
It looks like it was stepped on or something that has made the axel seat bent, meaning that the axis is slightly off kilter.
Any ideas how to bend the axel seat to get it to be straightup and down the axis? Myu plan is to just heat it up and then just try to gently bend the aluminum with the axle inserted
iirc axles are #6-32 which should be easy to find at hardware store. if you get a screw and thread that in for the bending part it will give you more leverage. unfortunately i don’t have a better idea than bending it back though. good luck!
Thanks for the insight! I havew a small workshop at work, ill check there, who knows, maybe ill get lucky and save a trip to home depot!
You might want to do this first
Bro i just literally tried this with a can of keyboard duster cuz i was bored and it came off LMAO
It helped to turn the kayboard duster upside down first and cool off the outer cups but it let go with a loud POP.
Once it’s apart I feel like you might be able to lightly tap it with a small hammer on the underside to get it to straighten out maybe. Very odd way for it to fail by the seat usually the axle bends or the threads strip out or axle pushes clean through I’ve not seen a metal throw actually deform like that myself.
Just in case you didn’t already solve this dilemma, I will share a few things. What I’m gonna share is specifically, and only my opinion based on what I see and what I dealt with. This isn’t the only view or necessarily the most accurate view or necessarily the only course of action, but here goes.>
First of all, nobody stepped on that yo-yo. Some genius put it in their pocket, probably back pocket and sat down on it.
…. if it was mailed to you like that, and the package has no damage to it and the yo-yo was packed well that would pretty much be impossible for the yo-yo to be like that. It would also be pretty much impossible for whoever put that in the package do not realize and recognize that that sucker was jacked up. So there’s that, lol.
Regardless, you didn’t need to take the yo-yo half apart. And you certainly don’t wanna tap on it or pound on it or do anything of that nature.
Most obvious that you will need at least one or two replacement axles. The first reason being the axle in there may be a little screwed up. I can’t tell from the image? From what I can see the axle doesn’t really look bad because it looks straight just at that angle, which means the half itself is the thing that has been primarily compromised. That being said, even though the axle is much harder than the body material and that hollow construction of the yo-yo half literally lends itself To that sort of damage, it is possible the axle if ever so lightly tweaked it’s still gonna be part of the problem. In other words, let’s say, you square up that body to an amazing degree of success, if the axle still a little funny, the yo-yo was gonna spin a little funny.
The best way or pretty much the most accurate way of bringing that yo-yo half back into the proper alignment would be to chuck the axle up in a lathe and literally very very carefully grasp the half and bend it back in the position. This is where you need a couple of axles because you need to take out the existing axle, each step of the way and screw in a good axle and then chuck it up again in the lays and spin it slowly, possibly with a dial indicator on the side to see where you’re at. If you had the opportunity and ability to use a tile indicator, then having the half in a two pieces would turn out to be an excellent idea. Simply because you could put the indicator on the flat edge of the inner half to indicate run out.
The good news is aluminum by nature of characteristics, does not work harden easily. Metals have what’s called point of elasticity. The point of elasticity means something can be moved in one direction or another to a certain degree enable it will rebound to its original form. A good example is a metal coat hanger. Grab one end in each hand slowly flex it like a bow and arrow and then let it go. It’ll bounce back at least pretty much. Then decide to get an attitude and bend it until your wrist is almost touch then let it go. It’s not gonna bounce back because you’ve questioned the metal beyond this point of elasticity.
If that aluminum half is just spent a little bit as a result of some fat rear end, sitting down on it, it’s possible that is it is not locked in that angled position and is still malleable enough to be carefully returned to squareness.
If…… If even though it only looks slightly bent, elasticity has been compromised to the point where there’s a slight work hardened area, then you will not be able to return it to perfectly square position. When metal is bent in right at the bent point, the metal gets hard, when you try to return it to its former position, the hard metal won’t bend, but the soft metal peripheral to the hard metal will follow it.
I don’t wanna turn this too much into a like a technical structural theory manual. But nothing here is very complicated.
Somebody sent you a yo-yo that was bent already probably from somebody sitting on it. It’s possible as long as a metal hasn’t been compromised by being moved too much, it shouldn’t be that tough to move it back. It just takes the right touch to do it.
If you’re careful, you should be able to do it if the metal is not molecularly locked at that angle.
If you’re not too handy, or you don’t have a light touch and you don’t have the right equipment, then you might as well just put the yo-yo in your pocket and jump out of an airplane, parachute, optional.
If you haven’t already fixed it and you’re not bold enough to try because you’re afraid you’re gonna jack it up, you can always send it to me and I’ll do what I can to fix it. I’ll even make a video of me fixing it and everybody can get something out of that that may be interested in watching metal move.
Just like any surgical operation, there is a chance the patient will die on the table. But that doesn’t keep people from operating, does it?
If you try this yourself, you will need to go to a hardware store and get a couple small nuts that you can use to lock the old axle so that you can unscrew it. I think I have a video on my YouTube thing about that too, locking up an axle by locking two nuts against each other.
I charge nothing to fix yo-yo’s or at least to try to fix them. I’ve never charged anything in well over 20 years. And I always pay for return shipping out of my own pocket. It’s just something that I do.
PS…. Something else I think is important to mention. It may not be the brightest idea to just try to bring the damage back using the axle itself. As I had mentioned earlier, you chuck the thing up in a lathe and then carefully try to bend it back in position by grabbing the body, and then indicating it a little at a time. The metal used in those thin aluminum shelves is actually pretty soft metal compared to other metals that could sustain the same type of damage. So it is possible that by just using the axle as leverage that the metal will move back to its original position. But since there’s more metal to move Peripheral to the axle hole, it’s possible the axle will bend before the metal in the bearing seat area trues up.
considering that it may be necessary to mount a spindle with the appropriate axle into a lathe and then screw the half onto the spindle. I work in the afternoons, but when I get home tonight, just in case this dilemma is still an issue. I will show you guys what I’m talking about.
most axles are actually M4 x .7 set screws these days. the 6/32’s is the weekender/day tripper sized axles
Thank you for all the info @yoyodoc! It was shipped to me like this and was fully acknowledged before the sale so nothing shady happened. The DK was offered at a substantial discount due to the condition. I would totally consider sending it off to your doctors office, but honestly i want to try and learn for myself, so big thank you for the guidence!
I had an extra 10mm M4 axle from another rough shape yoyo so it has a straight axle in it. I put a really long hex allen wrench into the axle to try and lightly coax the bearing seat back to alignment, and with the extra leverage i was able to get it to move somewhat. Still vibey as all hell.
Here is how shes lookin today
Honestly not as much wobble as I was expecting not good but not as bad as it could be
I think I recognize this Door Knob from a listing, I was tempted to pick it up, nice to see someone else willing to roll the proverbial dice!
It is what it is you know? For $50, i figured i could take on a project yoyo, my dad has a project car and he seems to enjoy working on it, and this is less expensive than a 1965 chrysler newyorker
Takes up way less space too lol
Thought Id touch base on this- i got it pretty much as smooth as i can make it without access to a lathe. I Popped the caps and put it into a c-clamp and just visually straightened it out. I also got a bandalo:re b-grade to fill the niche of “cool capped yoyo to do pal grinds in” in the ecosystem of my colleciton.
Its still vibey, but i mean its pretty chewed up fo that just a fact of life. If i was a yoyo id think i would also vibe a little so i dont want to cast stones froma glass house here.
