Fine tuning my fixies

I wish I could tune my fixies…with more finesse…

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@FourCorner, what did you do to that thing?!! magical moment, ne’pas!

get a bigger hammer drill next time :man_facepalming:

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Oh mylanta

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Extraction is not my speciality.
Good thing I’m not a dentist.

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Title is off here. This isn’t just any fixie but a very particular and IMO persnickety design of fixie…

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Looks tuned to me.

I have an irving that I screwed one half in backwards and it got stuck - forever in pagoda mode.

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Geesh. These amateur do-it-yourselfers… :upside_down_face:

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Wait. What exactly were you trying to do here?

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Not a fan of the woodthread system?

Not hugely, no… I found it tweaky in the past with the 2019 Eh and I already had the Ehknown unexpectedly fly apart once while playing with it. It kinda stresses me out TBH… I know I am probably just doing it wrong somehow, and I do appreciate the wood artistry at work here, for sure.

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I appreciate the artistry too. They are difficult to make and offer a unique aesthetic. They look great.

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I was trying to unscrew the halves to narrow the gap. The axle was tight and I ended up snapping it. The only way I could think of to extract it was to drill a whole in the middle and the insert something to turn and remove the axle and caps.

The half pictured was relatively undamaged. The other half has some bad scars.

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When I need to remove a tight axle I have a set of pliers and a strip of leather which I use. I just wrap the strip around the axle and use the widest part of the pliers and just give a little pressure. Never had an axle break that way.

The wood thread system is not without its liabilities (although to me it’s liabiliTY - singular - in that it’s fragile). The way I tighten them I never get fly aparts anymore. But I get that folks like to set it and forget it and don’t feel like the maintenance piece should be something to learn/refine.

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This is why I like simple glued in axles. You don’t have to mess with it, and as a bonus it is also much smoother (lol vibe).

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Agreed. I will try to avoid take apart at all costs.

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I found that putting the half with the stuck axle in the freezer for a couple of minutes, and using a towel to twist it out has worked, for the most part, for me. This is the second axle I’ve broken.

The first time was with my eH2018, and in that case I was able to do a clean extraction. This time I was not. It was admittedly my fault as I forgot that once you make the hole in the middle of the cap, you can push a pair of scissors in it and and twist the axle out. I ended up trying to make more holes, until I hit the wood of the yoyo.

It made for an interesting sight, seeing the dark flakes drip off from the drill bit and form a pool of brown wood, suddenly turn white.

I accept the limitation of my woodwork skills, but am happy to learn and do maintenance on my yoyos. I have spent a lot of time trying to tune my TMBRs. Perhaps I am doing something wrong.

I had half of my eH2018 fly off while shooting the moon on my balcony and plunge six stories into my neighbours garden. Thankfully it was 1 am and no one was outside.

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…a freaking nightmare.

I had mine twist apart and get a skip across the sidewalk at the skate park last week. Makes your heart race.
Now it’s so tight it won’t give either direction.

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I don’t want to come across as negative, particuarly in these trying times. The spectraply Eh models are sweeeeeet and I like them a lot.

Keep on keepin’ on, sir. :handshake:

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Postscript:

Finally got the gap size right.

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In case anyone is still interested, there is an end to this saga, a happy end, excuse the pun as you will soon see.

At the stage of the earbud mod, as I like to call it, I had decided to glue the axle into the yoyo. Because I sanded the inside of the yoyo down to make the axle easier to screw in and out, so as to avoid it getting stuck, it got too loose. I decided to try glue, and it was a bad idea. I didn’t get the axle in the right place and that was the end, stuck in the wrong position tightly.

Until I decided to try and extract the axle again. I somehow managed after much effort, some drilling, picking and prying.

My last axle, and the resolve that this time would be different, I decided to try and use the drilled in bits from the extracted axles for caps. They had the benefit of having a hole in them so I could screw them in and out easily, which I did until I found the sweet spot gap.

Well, it’s a little ugly, and a bit heavier, but it works great. I present you the toMorrow toDay:



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