I, like many of you I assume, use flowable silicone in my yoyos as response. The problem I have is, 1, it seems my yoyo doesn’t even last a week or 2 without the silicone wearing down and flying out of the yoyo at a hard bind. Granted, I do play it frequently but I wanted to get a sense of how often you need to re-silicone your yoyo just to compare. It’s a YYJ Phenom so maybe it wasn’t mean to hold silocone? Pads are just too expensive.
Second, how do you get the silicone to last in the tube after opened? I just poke a small hole in the seal and squeeze that into the yoyo but it still cures over and re-seals the next time I use it, it’s a huge chore to try and dig through the cured silicone to get to the liquid silicone. Any tips on making this easier?
Changing silicone should be very infrequent. The few yoyos I own that have silicone that I use semi-regularly only get changes once a year or so. It’s possible that when you fill the grooves, the sili isn’t flush with the top of the groove and the raised surface is causing the friction from binds to rip it out.
Honestly, a pair of pads can last years, I think they’re worth it.
I absolutely despise using flowable for this reason. Unless the pad recess is deep, like older YYJ oring grooves deep or CLYW snow tires deep, flowable won’t last for long. I’d recommend using Permatex Red Gasket Maker, not flowable so it’s a little more difficult to apply, but will last forever.
What pads are you using that last years? Even when I was using pads (albeit the cheap YYF CBC white pads) they would last, at best, a year and I wasn’t even playing them that much.
I have used gasket maker in the past (grey, if that makes a difference) and found it, like you said, difficult to fill in due to it being not as flowable, as well, a huge pain to remove. Maybe I gave up on it too early, will try red next time.