If I may ask, what makes Wenge so “nasty” to work with?
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Inhaling the dust can cause headaches and affects the central nervous system. Splinters from it go septic and it has been known to cause blood diseases. Its a very splintery wood, too.
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I’ve had this idea in my head of an old one-piece butterfly shape, slightly more angular, and of course not one piece, made out of Wenge. Called the Bitterfly, or Chonchon.
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I like it. Bitterfly is great
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Truly beautiful yoyo man! Second time I’ve heard luthier today, which makes 2 total times in my life 
make sure you post a photo of the ukelele when you get it!
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Looks very cool! I bet it plays a treat too. I would love to see the ukulele when it’s finished.
-Rad
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I have PayPal at the ready.
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Good luck finding a suitable sized piece of wenge in spindle orientation for this. Maybe it’s easier to find in the US, but here it’s virtually impossible.
Also, wenge doesn’t make for a great axle.
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I wouldn’t assume it would be a one-piece. Axle could be whatever.
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Oh I thought you meant turned out of a single block of solid wenge.
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That would be insane in the best way, but I understand the impracticality. Also end grain response on something that would maybe kill me with a splinter doesn’t sound like an awesome idea 
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You would be surprised, there are luthiers everywhere. If you were a guitar or mandolin player, you would probably know several. It’s all what circles you travel within.
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Looks like the new response I’ve been using is out. Kyle doesnt like it so far. I think it has some merit.
Going try to work on making the original response feel a little smoother on the throw and less aggressive. I have ideas that should work.
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I’m looking for metal rings to make a “bi-material” wood/metal throw.
Like this just metal. Stainless or brass?
Not necessarily this exact size. But similar.
Any ideas?
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Curtain rings? Those that are meant to go over wooden curtain poles. The majority are wooden but brass, copper (at least, coated) and other metals are available.
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Ive been looking for the same… let me know if you found a good option.
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An industrial fastener supply probably have what you need. This is the biggest that Grainger has
https://www.grainger.com/product/GRAINGER-APPROVED-7-75-mm-A2-Stainless-Steel-6FY68
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I’m anxious to see what I think, so hard to wait for that long trip! Can you share a bit about what Kyle said about it?
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If you want my opinions on the response and I guess to give Glen some feedback from another person.
I like it, but it’s definitely not better. It’s just very different. A short summary would be to say that I think the new response system handles stall play extremely well, but it feels like a big downgrade for doing string tricks. Which might defeat the point just a bit since I think opening up the gap a bit more for string tricks was part of the design concept.
A longer summary would be that I think it responds great. Zero complaints on that front. Glen said the yoyo initially resisted an engineer wind from him. But in my experience I just popped on a brand new normal thickness Kitty string, cranked the tension a bit, and then just snap wound it and started playing. After a bit I loosed the tension back to normal and it’s still responding perfectly. So zero complaints from me there. With drilled hole response, how you get that kind of biting feeling during the response. There’s none of that here. The returns feel butter smooth, and there’s less speed variance during the return. On my other metal axle spinworthies, how the yoyo initially starts returning at a comfortable speed and then gets faster before hitting your hand. The returns on this yoyo feel like the entire return happens at a consistent speed. The caveat here is that there have been a couple times that the yoyo felt like it lost a bit of it’s power returning and kind of “died” into the stall. Just throwing and regenning with a bit more force and intent stopped that from happening.
The bad aspects though are that I think the new response really struggles to handle extra string layers. My string trick repertoire on fixies isn’t the best, but hitting Roller Coaster and Split the Atom on this is a struggle. The yoyo feels like it wants to snag and respond on the string much more easily when you’re in a mount. I’m wondering if this is because the extra string layer wants to get pushed into the response gap.
So yeah I really like my yoyo with the new response. I think it plays amazingly smooth for stalls and loops, but string tricks are a massive struggle on it. I mostly throw stall based tricks anyway, so not being as good for string tricks doesn’t bother me. I’ve also been messing with a bunch of fixie GT variations lately, and the extra wide gap on this is a blessing for getting knots out.
I’m curious to hear what Kyle and other people have to say about it too though.
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