I’m making credit card shims for my Kickside hoping to make it less responsive. I got the hole punched and used a scissors blade inserted into the hole to shave the hole a little bigger. It worked like a charm, I got a perfect fit and it couldn’t have been easier. Now it’s a matter of cutting the outside perimeter of the shim. When I look into the bearing seat of my Kickside, I see a raised ring around the center where the axle goes. Is that the size I want to make my shim? Do I try and duplicate that raised ring with the shim? (I hope this makes sense. You might have to look into the bearing seat of your Kickside or other YYJ yoyo to see what I’m talking about.)
My 2nd question is about the Kickside bearing. (or YYJ stock bearings in general) This is the first time I’ve ever opened the Kickside and I put the bearing on a pencil to test it’s spin and it doesn’t spin when I flick it. I know for certain the bearing isn’t broken in because I probably have less than 2 hours of play on it. Are the YYJ stock bearings pretty lubed up and need a good breaking in? Should I allow more time to break it in or should I clean it and give it a drop of thin lube?
I figured the shim thing out. Using a nail clippers really makes it easy to trim them down to the desired size and they work nicely. They’re very easy to make.
The shims might work a bit too well. I played it for a while but a lot of times the binds were loose and slippy. It is more unresponsive but I still can’t do a plastic whip without it grabbing and rapping me in the knuckles so it still needs some jiggering. Since I can’t get the bearing to spin when I put it on a pencil and flick it, I think I’m going to have to clean it (with a small drop of thin lube?) and see if that helps rather than play it out with the hope that breaking it in will do the trick. I’m curious to see how a cleaned bearing will affect the binds. Will they be looser and slippier since the bearing will supposedly be spinning freer or will it bind better and more tight because the yoyo will supposedly be spinning faster/longer?
When people use a credit card to make shims are they using the standard heavy plastic credit card or something that is similar but thinner?
Shims…you want to make the inside wide enough to fit around the post (like you probably already did) and then outside just has to be small enough that it doesn’t touch the outside part of the bearing.
I would just keep playing with it for about a week or so.
Yeah, unfortunately there’s all too many posts here that would qualify for an english teacher’s nightmare! ;D
Shims - The technique of sticking the scissors blade into the punched hole and a turning it around slowly to shave the inside of the hole away makes it easy to get an exact fit. Then I used the scissors to cut the outside circle to about 1/8th of an inch or so and then used a nail clippers to trim it the rest of the way. Maybe I should play it a while and see what happens. There’s no big hurry to get it tuned just right since it’s not my main throw. It’s kind of fun to mess with it and I learned to make shims in the process.
I made and added the shims to my Kickside but left the bearing stock and played it for about an hour last night and got incredibly frustrated with the loose/slippy binds and it was still responsive whenever you got a few strings in the gap, even on pretty basic tricks. I decided to clean the bearing and put a drop of thin lube in it (hair clipper oil) and it’s starting to play a bit better. I was able to do basic tricks like plastic whip and ripcord without it catching and rapping me in the knuckles. It seems to be binding a bit better as well so I’ll play it like this a while to see how it goes. I still don’t like the hybrid response with the starburst on one side. The screeching sound it makes when the string rubs against it is like an alarm warning me about how quickly it is slowing down the yoyo.
Oh and you don’t need an unresponsive yoyo for whips and slacks and stuff, like plastic whip. And it sounds like you might need to work on binds, but that just be me thinking this.
You must have a special skill that I lack because whenever I try a trick like plastic whip on a responsive yoyo, it’s catching and binding when that loop hits the gap. I first learned it on my unresponsive Lyn but when I tried it on my responsive yoyos, they would always catch and bind. Same thing with multi-string tricks. I haven’t tried to learn other slack or whip tricks yet but I assume I’d get the same results if I were to try it on a responsive yoyo.
re: binding - Yeah, I’m sure I probably could use some work on my binds but I don’t think it’s entirely me. I’m not so sure that the Kickside was meant to be an unresponsive yoyo but then again, maybe it is just me. Apparently others seem to have no problems with the starburst/o-ring hybrid response. I don’t like it and apparently it doesn’t like me.
