I’ll carry on with making the shims for the Deep State and I’ll see how the bought shims work in the Deeper State which hopefully will arrive tomorrow. 
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Alrighty then. While I anxiously await the arrival of my new Deeper State which is out for delivery.
I figure I’ll put your idea into action. Whenever you apply power tools to destructive work like this you should consider the safety of your eyes, as this causes tiny shards of metal to fling through the air in no determined direction. Safety glasses are good. I imagine this to be what you spoke of. This time I’ll follow my own advice and see if it turns out any better. 
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Getting results. Much slower, as the copper is harder than the brass. This process would eat right through nylon. Maybe melt it if you tried to go too fast. This will make the thinning process more drawn out but it’ll force me to slow down also. And the resulting shim will be stronger too. See how it clogs up the file?
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That is the concept.
But you did end up with 2 that are the same diameter.
Good job!
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Yeah. I’ll have to go out and get some more brass washers.
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So I ordered some shims from YYE and I’m going to wait for them. I’ll probably still get more brass and make shims from that as well. But I can say this……the Deeper State got here today. Holy cow. I took the shims and bearing from my previously modded Deep State and put them in. Man o Man. If you just love your Deep State, you’re gonna love a Deeper State. A direct swap of the modded guts from the Deep State setup made the “modded” Deeper State play nearly identical to the “modded” Deep State. Maybe even a tad more responsive. This is of course where custom fitting those shims comes in. I want to point out that…I did NOT have to modify the bearing seat or post at all. That makes the Deeper State actually easier to mod in this way. One only needs to determine how much shim they need to get the play they want.
So why do this mod? What’s the payoff?
It plays fast, real fast. But it’s easily controlled at low speed as well. Feels like a hot rod, very powerful. If you are used to slinging the crap out of a greased up bearing, I promise you that if you do that on this setup, it’ll come screaming right back at ya!! Ease into it. I like mine to be quite snappy but that’s adjustable to your preference by how thick your shims are. This kind of thing isn’t for everyone but if you like to tinker, and you get this right, you’ll love your Deep/Deeper State even more. If not, pull the half bearing and shims out, put your full sized bearing back in and you’ll be right back where you started. I’ll update more when YYE shims get here.
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I think that if I could find a screw that fits as opposed to a bolt maybe it’ll have a smaller head and allow those washers to be ground a tad smaller. The bolt head would only allow you to take them down so small. I’ll look for that at the hardware store too.
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Alrighty then. My wife works out of town 4 days a week so when she’s home on the weekends I’m kinda stingy with my time but here are some observations on the YYE shims. They are not a bad option but they have drawbacks. Using 2 in place of the custom ones that I made narrows the gap ever so slightly. Now keep in mind that I like fatter strings and I’m wanting to use this as a training tool for string tricks. So with my custom shims I was able to get the response to be very snappy but on landing trapeze and brother, both can be done without an immediate biting into the string and taking off. With the fatter strings I like. Because the response is coming solely from the pads, string choice (material makeup as well as thickness) will, I repeat, will have a major impact on how the yo-yo plays. So with custom fit you can adjust to the string of your choice, with store bought you can change string to get the play you like. So if I put a thinner string on I get play more similar to stock on my customs. With the store bought shims, the strings I like bite into the string as soon as the trapeze even breathes on the string, so I had to go with a thinner string which yields better results. So there is still wiggle room with the store bought. The string I like to use is Zipline Smoothie. This seems to me the same (close) thickness as Kitty XXL. So if you prefer a more normal string to this, then the YYE shims should serve you perfectly.
Another observation: the YYE shims are not brass. Not sure what they are, but if you over tighten them, they will contort out of shape and interfere with the bearing, and consequently they don’t work well after this. I didn’t try to flatten it back with a hammer, that may help. The point is though, these won’t hold up to much dismantling and reassembly. You may even consider them as good for only a few uses if extreme caution is used during dis/assembly.
Since there was so much bite I decided to try 2 on one side and one on the other. This plays similarly enough to the stock setup that I wasn’t interested in it. Also it drastically increases the damage to the shims. Next up…a little discovery on the pads.
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Here’s a note on the pads. My red Deep State; which I bought new less than 2 months ago, came with “red” Flow Groove pads on it while my second “used” blue Deep State as well as my “previously owned” Deeper State came with the “clear” Flow Groove pads installed. Both are available for purchase and not the same thickness!! 
That’s right!! The red pads are thinner than the clear. Here are some pics of them installed as well as a side by side comparison next to some new reds that I bought.
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Mind you, I was switching strings and I’m not sure what was on the red one in these pics but the blue one had the Smoothie and you can clearly see the string resting on the pads. You can also clearly see the difference in the gap. I had to get the position of the yo-yo very specific in order to show both pads in these pics, so it’s not a camera illusion. You can also clearly see a significant difference in the gap widths between these two different pads.
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I mean shoot you’ve modded the yoyo this much so far might as well flow some grey or clear silicone while your at it to get the response your looking for and further fine tune this beast. I mean why not right lol.
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Ultra grey is super unresponsive and flowable is more grippy( I heard but I have only used red and grey personally) but I kinda agree w @Captrogers idk this is a cool thread good luck getting your perfect deep state
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On that note, there is merit to what you say. As you can see in the pics, even the reds still extend into the gap where flowed silicone could be poured level, or even recessed. Dang!!! This feels liked urged experimentation!!!
I have 2 other yo’s that I’ve modded similarly that I felt like needed to have silicone flowed as the final step and I’ve never done this before. I’m not scared, I’ve used silicone many, many, many times before. Sometimes when I probably shouldn’t have, but I digress. I just haven’t had priority on them yet. But it feels as though the masses are urging it upon me to take on this task. Perhaps as an aside, I can also catalog here the other mods and the results of flowing the pads. 
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ultra grey has been working GREAT for me. ive now replaced pads in my deep state, weekender, and respawn lite. Different size bearings and pads in all 3, but the response so far has been phenomenal. i’m sure it would be even snappier with grease. highly recommend at least trying it out on your responsives =]
while the grey is harder than red or clear flowable, 45 shore rating is still fairly soft as far as response pads go. most are in the 50-60 range in general, and average on the higher end of that scale. (source: LANDING PADS — ROUND SPINNING OBJECTS (RSO))
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On this point, I already have too much response from the store bought shims, so the point of flowing the pads would actually be to slightly decrease the response as the Flow Groove pads stand out into the groove where flowing pads would open the gap a tad. I do have other throws that I use lube on and get a very nice throw. Something about the way it felt on these Deep/Deeper States didn’t appeal to me. I think that because of the lighter weight of these throws, the extra spin from the dry bearing just gives the yo-yo more presence. I have motor control issues and yo-yos are quite therapeutic for me. Not just throwing but I just love to tinker too. Part of the issue with grease on these lighter yo-yos is that they decelerate much faster and this slows their physics down. Now here is where I say that I understand that many styles rely on this aspect, but for me, when the yo-yo slows like this it’s like the physics changes faster than my brain can compensate for. It seems crazy but it’s just easier for me to track and I just prefer the feel of having that bearing spinning free.
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