I don’t have a removal tool. My removal tool broke. I can’t wait in shipping usually what I hear when ppl ask me about this or I see threads posted.
This is what I always suggest for bearing removals, and how I do it daily.
If a tool works for you, or a 1/4 drill bit 
this is what I believe is the easiest and likely everyone has a pair of these in the garage.
Posted as a separate thread so it’s easily searched.
I use a vicegrip with rubber coverings. That allows me to really wail on the bearing without damaging it. They have to be thick rubber coverings though
I’ve used my needle nose to do that a few times. Works well. I haven’t found a great way to deal with an mr85 that’s being stubborn but that’s why I have a bunch of spare parts I probably don’t need.
I feel like so long as you don’t put the death grip on it and warp/crush the bearing this is the best way to do it. Maybe it’s just me and/or my removal tool, but it seems like you always have to really pry back and forth with it and it’s kinda sketchy to me
Still small rocks, large ones cause the damage to the seat.
The classic string in the bearing seat and tightening the throw always works.
For sure. I try to rock as little as possible and just pull in one motion if at all feasible (admittedly it frequently isn’t)
This has been added to:
Useful modification & maintenance guides – clean, repair, tune, fix yoyos
Can you elaborate on this?
Basically put string in the bearing seat where the bearing isn’t stuck. Tighten the yoyo up and the string should get stuck under the bearing allowing you to pop it off by pulling. Used to be a super common method for removing stuck bearings.
Ah!! That makes sense.
A little preventative maintenance goes a long way too. A very lite application of thin lube on the post(s) can aid in ease of future removal.
While not super common, this also prevents galvanic corrosion between the Bearing and The Yoyo material (Especially on Raw posts or posts that have become raw).
Have fun
The metal on these is very hard. What has happened to me a time or 2 is that the outer ring just cracks or shatters from the pressure. And still it held on tight…
WARNING TO ANY AND ALL THAT HAVE ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER OR MAYBE ONLY 10 MINUTES TO LIVE OR MAYBE THEY ALREADY KNOW EVERYTHING AND DON’T HAVE THE PATIENCE TO ACTUALLY LEARN ANYTHING ELSE BECAUSE WHY BOTHER? STOP RIGHT HERE. LIKE SOME OF YOU SAY TOO LONG DIDN’T READ. THAT IS FINE. But if you decide to take my oratory adventure, save yourself the trouble of crying like a baby and saying it was too long. There are plenty of posts to read, which you may find more interesting. Especially if you carry around a pair of pliers in your back pocket, then you know more than I can tell you, lol. ANYWAY, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. THIS LONG-WINDED POST IS NOT FOR THE WEAK OF HEART OR MIND.)
On this subject of which I am very well-versed, I will give you three specific suggestions of what not to do.
Don’t use pliers.
Don’t use pliers.
At last, but not least don’t use pliers.
Why? Pliers are so easy and usually available somewhere in the house.
Some people will immediately think to themselves… Why I use pliers and it doesn’t seem to cause any problems for me and the bearing comes off.
A bearing primarily consist of for specific parts. The outer race… The inner race… The bearing balls… in the cage that contains the balls.
Of those poor component parts, the cage containing the balls is the most delicate.
When the bearing is between the halves which are screwed snuggly together, the only direction the bearing can spin is in a straight line. Contained between the halves, there is no possibility of angular stress to the bearing structure.
Obviously, the primary objective is to remove the bearing successfully when needed. And just like anything else in life pretty much… there are only two ways of doing things: the right way in the wrong way. Just because you get away with using the wrong method doesn’t justify that methodology.
I have had people tell me for years… Well, I used a pair of pliers and I had no problems at all.
I am not giving a specific percentage on how much closer to bearing failure. A person gets when using pliers, simply because everybody could possibly use a slightly different method of wiggling and power to achieve the results of removing the bearing from the yo-yo half. Some people go lightly and sneak up on it. And some people that are a little short on patience, just get a monster grip on it and jerk to sucker off!
Some people say well I use pliers, but I’m very careful with my gripping pressure so as not to put any scratches on the outside of the bearing. Interestingly, the outer race of most bearings is just as hard or harder than the pliers that you’re using. And getting a small mark or blemish so to speak on the outer race of the bearing actually means nothing, since on unresponsive yo-yo’s the string is pretty much static on the bearing. The halves of the yo-yo are spinning on the bearing. The bearing isn’t spinning with the string.
The problem with the plier method, even though you might not achieve instant bearing failure, is because since the race is so delicate the leverage you put on the outer race as you wiggle back-and-forth with the pliers can tweak the bearing cage just enough to suck some of the life out of it… Long-term.
For the people that say, they use pliers and never damage a bearing, that miracle is only in their mind.
That is about his logical and saying that you hit yourself in the head with a hammer every day, but you use a very small hammer, so it’s not really gonna do anything negative to your head.
The advent of the bearing removal tools goes along with the old saying that necessity is the mother of invention.
If pliers didn’t have the potential to jack up good bearings, nobody even would’ve bothered making bearing removal tools.
The basic concept of a bearing removal tool is to direct the force specifically where it needs to be. On the ID of the inner race. But that being said, it also must be recognized that if uncertain yo-yos, the bearing cavity is very shallow, if you put too much leverage on the bearing tool, it’s actually possible to force the outer edge of the outer race to touch the yo-yo half and end up tweaking the cage anyways. But that is a very rare thing because most yo-yos have a deep enough bearing cavity that that won’t happen, but I thought I just mentioned it.
Some people will say well I use pliers because my yo-yo always has the bearing stuck on the side with the axle. And that’s one reason that some of the bearing removal tubes are just that they got a hole in the middle to accommodate removing a bearing on the same side, the axle is on.
My personal theory is that if you’re gonna screw around with your yo-yos and play musical chairs with the bearings that you should also equip yourself with enough tooling to remove an axle now and then.
The suggestion that yo-yo Joe made, actually worked years ago when many of the yo-yos had bearings that were not jammed down onto the bearing posts. Loose bearings can be removed with the string method.
Unfortunately, for whatever reason or reasons, even some of the best yo-yos… I should say best performing yo-yo’s have these bearing seats that are so damn tight that once you screw the yo-yo together, sometimes it’s even difficult to unscrew the yo-yo because the bearing doesn’t wanna cooperate, the seats are so tight.
Interestingly, even though some makers will say it’s hard to be precise enough to have bearings that can slip on and off yo-yo halves without a tool… Somehow forgot to recognize that one drop does it all the time. They have cracked the code on the different types of bearing to bearing seat measurements. You can have a loose fit… And you can have an adjust right fit. of bearing to bearing seat measurements. You can have a loose fit… And you can have just right slip fit… And you can have a compression fit.
One drop recognize years ago that they can make the bearing seat, precise enough to basically allow the bearing to mount to the seat without any side play whatsoever.
One advantage that one drop has especially with their side effects, yo-yo models, is that more often than not they can control the exact final dimension of the bearing seat because there’s no finish on it.
Anything from any manufacturer that is anodized, nickel, plated, gold, plated or coated in any way, can end up affecting the final diameter of the bearing seat and cause what we all know are the obvious tight bearing seat problems we have all had to deal with.
Obviously, if someone has one yo-yo and they’re on a budget, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that they don’t have the money to buy a bearing tool. There’s really not much you can do about that. Can’t make something out of nothing.
That being said, if a person has, let’s say, maybe a dozen yo-yos, then they can afford a bearing removal tool. Because if they can’t afford a bearing removal tool, in the long run, they will end up having to afford purchasing more bearings, lol
I didn’t post this up to start an argument. Anybody that wants to say they use pliers and they use pliers for years and they’ve never had any problems… That may be their opinion… But that certainly has its downsides. And since all bearings aren’t created of equal quality, some of the cages are more delicate than other ones. And if you want compound matters, twist your bearings around the pliers and run them dry. That’s like stabbing somebody in the head and shooting them just to make sure you did a good job.
Come to think of it… Where’s my pliers? I gotta trim my sideburns.
Looks like you used the end of string instead of the middle. I tested it out to see if it still holds up and it still did a good job. I used a normally poly string and it didn’t break.
Start by laying the string in the deepest part of the bearing recess. Make sure to use the middle of your string.
Screw the yoyo together pretty tight.
Unscrew the yoyo and check the bearing has moved to the other yoyo half. Sometimes you have to move the string around to find the sweet spot.
Final step is the grab the string on both side and pull up to pop the bearing off.
I would not use pliers as I am interested in recovering the bearing and have already badly deformed a jammed transaxle by using pliers. Amusingly this is a One Drop yoyo I’m having this issue with, albeit a very old one (2011). Usually I’m able to just pull the bearing out at least enough to pry it with something. Not a great method but it beats having a dirty bearing stuck in your yoyo forever.
I can’t imagine that the bearing was ever very stuck to begin with if it just swaps sides like this. This method unfortunately does nothing for me but push the bearing as far down into its seat as possible.
I’m not sure how stuck your bearing is but I would say this works on most throws. The bearing on the yoyo I used couldn’t be removed with my fingers. It took a bearing tool a bit of wiggling back and forth to pop it off. @zxin
Also you can always throw the yoyo half in the freezer. The difference in temperature for aluminum and steel after feeezing for a little bit can cause it to loosen.
It’s pretty cold here but not freezing so I thought that would help but I only gave myself blisters. Freezer next sounds like a decent option, although I’m going to get frozen water all over this poor bastard. 
