I’m surprised more people don’t just use a plain old toothpick. Y’all are creative though, I’ll give you that.
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Knot in the string I use a Leatherman.
Axle knot I made a G10 (glass fiber composite) string picking thingy. The regular toothpicks kept breaking on me and it got annoying.
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Metal. Be careful. I’m sure you are or you wouldn’t use it. If I get a bad knot I send the yoyo out for repair. Expensive but less frustrating.
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The ones I have tried break too easily.
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True. I have broken quite a few toothpicks. At this point, as long as I can see the loop, I can easily slip it off. If the loop is buried in a sea of tangled string layers, I’ll usually just unscrew it.
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Nice
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An abundant natural resource, and these curved boys from barrel cactus are nearly perfect. Much more durable than a toothpick, sharper than the paddle picks, and has a good texture in case you need a good grip for a tight knot.
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Yeah I hear ya you do have to be pretty careful but it is a great tool for those hard to reach knots that you can’t get out with your finger 
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Who does the work?
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I have a preference for the use of spikes from some cacti, like this one from a ferox Gymnocalycium.
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Am I the only pleb here who just unscrews the yoyo?
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OK but joking aside, I know why people don’t like to unscrew yoyos, you can damage the threads, etc etc yes yes so I try to use an orange stick (little wooden stick for cuticles) when possible. But tbh, I’ve unscrewed yoyos a lot when the stick doesn’t work,and I’ve never had a problem. Is it really that common to strip yoyos when unscrewing them?
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I’ve said that before as well. I’d rather unscrew the yoyo than risk messing up a nice string. I’ve never stripped one. After spending a half hour getting a knot out of a Spinworthy Harbinger (which I would definitely have unscrewed if I could have), the axle loop was starting to fray anyway so cutting would have been smarter in that case.
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I would not own a yo-yo that I’d be afraid to unscrew.
Living in fear is not living.
I’ve been unscrewing yo-yos for 24 years, now. When I was much more active ‘modding yo-yos’, I unscrewed hundreds of yo-yos……multiple times.
I’ve stripped 2 yo-yos. And technically, I should say only one. Because the one that ‘stripped’ was already cross threaded when I got it. So backing the axle out just roaches out the threads that were already compromised when it was incorrectly screwed together.
The other yo-yo was made from a very soft aluminum alloy(almost felt like pot metal) and it was just a poor design and construction.
A certain percentage of the yo-yo community almost seems to have a ‘Phobia’ about unscrewing yo-yos. An unfounded fear. The mindset doesn’t seem to be, ‘If I unscrew it, it might strip’.
It seems more like, ‘If I unscrew my yo-yo, it will strip’…… which is total silliness.
…Unscrew any yo-yo you have(That unscrews of course) when you need to unscrew it. For knots, to clean the bearing… to change out or check response, etc.
I have learned a few things in my 50 years as a mechanic/welder/painter/etc.>>> All problems are the result of any one of 3 things: Equipment error, operator error… or a combination of the two.
Since a yo-yo in good hands is just as much of a tool as a toy, it should be considered ‘equipment’.
All equipment logically needs periodic maintenance.
Unscrewing a yo-yo should not present a fear of impending doom.
PS… to answer the OPs’ question…my favorite knot tool is a new string.
My logic is simple. I consider my time is worth $60 an hour. If I spend 5 to 10 minutes working out a tight knot or two. I just charged myself 5 or 10 bucks to save a $1 string🤔
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Right. Haste and unintentional carelessness strips yoyos.
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The only reason I don’t like unscrewing yo-yos is because engravings could get mis matched. Like yesterday, I cleaned the bearing on my wedge, and now the two arrows don’t line up on the rims. It’s driving me insane.
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I’m not necessarily “afraid” of unscrewing my yoyos, but there are two things that potentially happen when I unscrew them:
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I risk stripping the threads. I’m not super worried about this, as any yoyo worth the money shouldn’t have this problem. But I do occasionally mess stuff up. I’m not the most mechanically inclined nor the most stable where my hands are concerned. So any time I unscrew it, I’m risking myself making a mistake.
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I risk messing up the tuning. I have a few yoyos that took a fair bit of time to get just the right “screwed in amount” to get perfectly smooth. Unscrewing it risks having to redo that time. Again, not an issue with every yoyo, but on some.
Given those two things, and the fact that I’ve gotten handy enough with a simple yarn needle that it usually takes me less time than unscrewing it, 9 times out of 10 I just use the yarn needle.
If I can’t get it like that in about 5 seconds, I’ll unscrew the yoyo or cut the string.
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I’m not afraid to unscrew yoyos unless they have death grip bearing posts that barely fit together and require me to freeze the yoyo to even have a chance to unscrew. Anything else I don’t mind unscrewing at all for maintenance whenever a bearing locks up. But when I’m working on new hard tricks with a high knot potential, I probably end up with a knot like once every minute or two, I’d end up unscrewing yoyos hundreds of times a week if I didn’t just pick knots. Even tight knots only take a couple seconds to pick with the tools I use, so it just makes a lot more sense to me than unscrewing that often.
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Just to add:
I’m not trying to make a statement for other people. I know some folks just unscrew them and move on, and that’s fine. There’s no right or wrong way to get knots out.
I was just trying to explain my reasoning for doing it the way I do it.
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Did you put the same bearing back in? I tried to swap my wedge bearing with a NSK gold bearing which worked better but the marks didn’t line up so I put the old one back in. Yeah that’s the kind of stuff that bugs me. 
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