G'Day,
The last week I've really been really hitting it hard training a few hours a day learning as many tricks I can (In order), as well as I can on yoyoexpert. There's been two so far I can't do. Pop the Clutch and UFO. Stop and Go - particularly the Go part usually gives me grief. I'm sure I'm doing it right but it hardly ever starts spinning, and if it does it usually isn't strong enough to return.
I took my YoYo apart and saw that the friction stickers have kinda... shruck and are now invading the spacers, is it time to replace as I think this is impeding the YoYos ability to spin on itself somewhat.
I was also wondering, on average, how many hours of play you'd get out of one string and what it looks like when you want to replace. Mine's looking a bit skanky and was probably replaced about 5 hours of play ago and I think it might be time to go.
I recently cleaned the bearing for the first time with metho and have no lube. AJ runs his bearings dry, and at the moment I don't REALLY see any ill effects to doing so, BUT on the subject of the bearing, I also see that most of the time there's a little black sticky gunk on the bearing, possibly glue or something off of the friction sticker, like a little blob of it that can be taken off by hand, but I was wondering what that could be.
Also, I seem to be tearing the back of my left index finger up with ropeburn and I was wondering what everyone thinks about YoYo gloves as I'm considering a pair, probably black.
tl;dr should shrinking friction stickers be replaced, how many hours of play does a poly/cotton string last, what's the crap on my bearing, what's the opinion on YoYo gloves?