What's the best freehand weight?
There is no best... try different weights to see what feels best to you. Steve Brown uses cancelled casino dice. Other people have used bouncy balls, paddleballs, and even mini yo-yos. To use a die, you need to drill a hole through it and tie the string on. The same goes for bouncy balls; however, the string has a tendency to cut through the ball. To combat this, you'll need to either put eyelets on each side of the ball (as pictured), or put the string through a piece of tubing that goes through the hole in the ball. I personally like to use a bouncy ball because there are several tricks where you can bounce the ball off the floor, walls, etc., but I keep cutting them so I use dice. Dice are harder on your hands, however, so it's a tradeoff. Try several different things until you find what's right for you.

Here's a few more good pointers from Chasm (spencer):

• Always use a fast RPM drill, but drill through slowly, and consistently
  
• Tighten the vice only tight enough to hold it steady, as if it is too tight, it will crack or split in half after it's drilled.
  
• For superballs, find the seam line (small line around the circumference of the ball) and drill PERPENDICULAR to it. kinda like slicing an orange, where the slice is the seam, and the drill is the vine. If you drill with the seam line, it simply wedges it apart, and ruins the superball.
  
• Optimumly to drill, a drill press is the best, but a lot of yoists don't have one available. Unless you want to go into the drilled dice selling business, you only need a hole through the dice to attach the string.
  
• 1/8" is a good bit size to use...but may be slightly bigger if you need to fit in an eyelet into the superball.
  
• For dice, as a side note, for some casino dice, sharp edges are present, and may dig through the string..and even your hand. Ouch!
  Back to Mods and Maintenance