I have been able to do it for quite a while but my best Sky Bind with a KonKave on its best day isn’t anything like it is on a more accurate Flat Bearing on it’s worst day.
I must have just ingrained it into my play or something… I don’t mean this at ALL in a bad way, but I recognize that maybe it’s just because I do Sky Bind all the time (dozens upon dozens of times a day since I learned it over 2 years ago) but I don’t have any issue doing it with a KK bearing.
The physics are simple… when the yoyo goes up into the string, a loop is created that whips into the gap. Too much string or too grabby (response/string combination) and you can snag. Too small of a loop or not a tight-binding yoyo (huge gap with thin string) and it won’t catch. I feel like the bearing has so little impact on the bind itself. The centering bearing only “pushes” string layers into middle to a certain degree; there’s lots of opportunities for the “loop” to layer up and bind.
If I have a yoyo that I constantly miss Sky Bind on (rare), it means I need to be using thicker string on that yoyo (I usually use thin or normal, but I can throw in a Kitty Fat if need be) because other binds are probably affected as well.
Interesting reading as always Greg, I’d say you are right that the shape of the bearing shouldn’t matter much (probably if at all, right). I actually just picked up the Sky Bind recently but so far I have been able to do it better on Flats.
One way or the other, I’m not fluent enough in the trick yet to go refute another man’s outlay of physics knowledge into the mix.
I genuinely was surprised because I didn’t know so many people could do a sky bind
(thought I was special ;( )
Then I realized my image of a sky bind was wrong, I was thinking of the one that yusuke postulate does, where he pops the yoyo up, and whips it in the gap to bind…
Anyway, I never(pretty much) miss a sky bind, and I stricly use CT/Groove
Unless I’m using 2 week old string or pads, I’ve never had any issue whatsoever.
Infanct, I find flat bearings grabby in a sense
wall of text coming, this got a bit longer than I anticipated.
Sorry, but scientifically this falls apart very quickly.
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the throw is a -massive- variable… how hard, how straight, what was the release point, how forceful was the impact on the end of the string, was it the same string? …you’re basically dead in the water at that point alone.
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if you’re going to use a throw method, your sample size better be -huge-… 5 isn’t a sample size. To get anything resembling accuracy with such a wildly variable test method, you would need 100s or even 1000s of throws to average.
I too have tested a -lot- of bearings… by a lot I mean hundreds. I’ve tested bearings from basically every major bearing company or distributer in the world that I could get ahold of over the last 12+ years… carbon steel, stainless steel, ceramic, konkave, grooved, gold plated, ultra dry, you name it…
Admittedly I haven’t tested much in the last couple years (aside from a few bearings sold with too much hype) because my overall sample size is so large… and well, bearings just don’t change that much.
My test methods are a bit more rigorous. I put the yo-yo into a mount… basically a thin ‘stand’ with a hole in it that fits the OD of a bearing exactly… then the yo-yo screws together through the hole. This gives me fixed situation, no variables… and it’s realistic since the bearing is carrying the load of the yo-yo.
I then use a motor with a rubber wheel on it… the motor is set to a specific RPM, the rubber wheel is placed against the rim of the yo-yo and used to accelerate the yo-yo to what is now a known speed. This means every test is from exactly the same speed and the only thing being tested is the bearing itself.
The end results of all this? bearings just don’t matter that much.
Do some spin longer than others? absolutely… bearings vary in quality quite a lot from company to company (and sometimes even within the same company from batch to batch)
Does it -really- matter? no. The differences aren’t night and day… they’re a few seconds here or there. Every now and then a bearing will show a huge spike over others, but when tested a few times it always averages back out.
Is there a placebo effect? yup… and a proven one at that. I’ve been conducting that experiment since the days of the abec-rating-wars… if you’ve every borrowed a yo-yo from me at a contest, you were part of the test 
As GregP has gone over… binds have nothing to do with bearings.
Now stepping back from the scientific… do different shapes perform differently? Of course they do… a little. A bearing with some angular shape to it is going to exactly what it’s designed to do, keep layers of strings pushed towards the center and away from the response system. The truth is though, most yo-yos have such massive gaps in them, the overall improvement is pretty minor.
Kyle
Dingdingding!
We have a winner!!
For what it’s worth, someone asked on the YYF last.fm what the benefits of a flat bearing were and Ben’s response was that they bind and regen better than any other bearing.
For me a yoyo sometimes throws better with a profiled bearing. But normally the loose/missed binds more then makes me go back too flats.
At the end of the day, Ben is just another passionate yoyoer. He certainly hasn’t worried himself with the same rigorous testing Kyle has. And as a passionate yoyoer with preferences, a history, other players’ preferences and opinions informing his… well, his conclusions are just as likely to be part placebo and part “well, my instincts tell me THIS…” as anybody else’s.
Like my science teacher taught me “science is never perfect and there will always be errors”.
Your science teacher is wrong. Are there often errors? yes… always? not even close. If that was the case, science wouldn’t be very reliable now would it?
“facts is facts”
Rigorous testing eliminates as many variables as possible, and as such eliminates as many errors as possible. Is my method absolutely 100% perfect? probably not… but it’s scientifically very solid, and is as good as can be expected… and it’s solid enough that it doesn’t allow for significant errors to occur.
Kyle
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The testing is actually very similar to most tests with bearings, such as with cycling as an example and the belief of ceramic bearings being better than standard bearings. Like the long wall of text states, sure there is a difference. Is it enough to be significant? Not at all really.
But then regardless of “bearing speed” it all depends on the play and accurate string placement, movement, etc right? A “better” bearing isn’t going to make up for sloppy technique.
Oh oh, I’m screwed. 
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I second this. Yes different bearings have their performance advantages but it’s not going to make you a better player. It’s all personal preference and how you perceive “better performance”. With that said there is no best bearing that everyone can agree on.