Weird coincidence of a forum post. Just yesterday for the first time I ended up sanding down a bearing post on two yoyos. I have a Kappa that was already vibey from dings, and the bearing post was so tight it took gorilla strength to unscrew even after freezing it. Getting the bearing out after that was also an exercise in frustration, and I could tell that just unscrewing it a single time had already put a ton of stress on the axle threading. After about 10 minutes of sanding down the bearing post by hand with 2000 grit sandpaper, the bearing now slides on and off easily and the halves screw together with no issues. I took the risk since it was already a bit vibey and I felt like just unscrewing another couple times would strip it, but it was worth it and showed that just taking the ano down a bit vastly improved the yoyo.
My understanding is that tight bearing posts are used to lower rate of B grades due to smoothness during QC. But a big random factor to this is that the anodizer can mess up the extremely tight tolerance. So in this instance I hold no contempt for the manufacturer, but I will say it’s very lame that yoyos with bearing posts this tight will be sold as A grades just because they’re smooth. If I feel like just normal use will destroy the yoyo unless I take sandpaper to it, that doesn’t really seem acceptable to me. My Akita which retailed for 150 dollars had the bearing post look like this after removing the bearing three times total. Removing the bearing seems like extremely normal maintenance to me, and something that you should be able to perform without damaging your yoyo.
Again I don’t blame Spiral or CLYW in any way since I’m assuming the anodization process is where this happened. And it seems to be very rare to have a case of it this extreme, I’ve had a lot of yoyos and these are the only two I’ve ever even had to consider doing this on. Every other tight bearing post I’ve had on a yoyo has just easily popped out using a bearing tool, and I’ve never had bearings just rip the ano off the post like this. I have to say I’d heavily prefer to have a light fingernail vibe out of the box from a looser bearing post than needing to take sandpaper to a brand new 150 dollar yoyo out of fear of having it rendered unusable through normal maintenance.
The best bearing posts I’ve ever had on a yoyo have been on my Japan Technology yoyos, the yoyos are still super smooth while having bearings you can just lift out with your fingers. I’m guessing that just like One Drop, it’s because they have a lot more control over the entire manufacturing process. Even if the yoyos weren’t totally smooth though, I’d still prefer looser bearing posts like that. It’s not like a bit of fingernail vibe actually matters, especially when the cost of achieving smoothness is also putting yoyos at risk of being rendered unusable through normal maintenance.