Waxing the wood axle on a wooden yo-yo?

General Yo-Yo
19

I got another No Jive (black/grey painted finish) so I can test more. I was going to say “man this sleeps WAY less than my Clean Machine with the waxed axle” but then I weighed them

  • No Jive: 50g
  • Clean Machine: 55g

Pretty sure I was feeling the weight more than anything else. I’ll test using the same exact one since it came with spare axles.

OK! Using the same exact No Jive yo-yo and (cotton) string it came with, here’s my methodology

  1. Throw 5 hard sleepers to break things in a little
  2. Throw a very hard forward pass to reverse around the world (forward, over my head, then behind my back, then looping around to my front)
  3. At the apex of the reverse around the world, when it’s facing me again and has completed one full circle, do a gravity pull
  4. Repeat steps 2-3 five times.

I did this 5-10 times, granted there is some natural human variability here but I got a feel for it.

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With the stock config: the NJ poops out before it can ‘snap’ back to my hand most of the time. I sometimes don’t even get a solid return, where the string can wind all the way back in.

After using Burt’s Bees on the string loop: the NJ always reliably returns to my hand, often with a very firm snap, depending on the throw.

So yeah, I’m concluding that the beeswax on the wood axle does work. It’s not a night and day difference, or anything (I mean how much spin are you really gonna get on a wood axle, regardless of how smooth it is), but it is a noticeable difference.

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