Any photos of what's inside the paper shroud? How does the top behave without it?
Sorry, I have no photos, it's very simple anyway;
The back of the chassis of the motor was glued to the ergal tip. A thin disk of light wood with a hole in the center was glued to the chassis of the motor, with the chassis inside the hole of the disk. On the wooden disk there are glued 4 AAA size batteries and the remote control panel. Over them there is a heavy flywheel attached directly to the shaft of the motor. The flywheel is free to spin and doesn't touch anything of the various items around it. The construction was compact, with no space or very little space between the various pieces.
In the beginning there was not the paper shroud, I added it later.
Without the paper shroud, the torque from the air drag on the flywheel was transferred to the tip, which tended to spin in the opposite direction of the flywheel.
I didn't want this, so I added the paper shroud, to isolate the flywheel from the air around.
I wanted the tip steady, without any torque on it.
Absent the motor, any bearing friction between these components would ultimately serve to transfer angular momentum, and therefore spin in the same direction, from flywheel to tip. Will have to think about how a chassis-mounted motor running at constant speed relative to the chassis might affect that flow.
This experiment was similar to those I made with the gyroscope used as a spinning top, the flywheel was spinning but the tip was steady:
The gyroscope used like a spinning top has no motor, and it behaves as you say, the bearing friction tranfers torque from the flywheel to the tip, in its same direction. Even if the torque on the tip wasn't sufficient for making the tip to spin, still this torque produces what I called a "static rolling resistance", which is in the direction to make the gyroscope rise. So, the gyroscope spinning like a top behaves similarly to a top, they both have a rising torque from rolling, ("static" or dynamic), in the same direction, and they both can rise because of this.
The motor cancels this torque.
For example, if you mount a wheel on a drill and turn the drill on, you feel a torque in your hands, while the wheel accelerates.
When the drill with the wheel reaches its full and constant speed, you don't feel anymore the torque from the drill to your hands. The motor cancels the torque.
If at that point you turn the drill off, you feel the torque again, but in opposite direction, with the wheel decelerating and trying to make the drill spin in its same direction, through the bearings friction.
