As I said above, once lube in those tiny bearings dry/hardens up, the cone/races grind wider to the point where many if not all of the bearings fall out and left with nothing. The FW will still remain threaded, but now you have other directional forces that will further warp and deform the entire assembly.

I posted a photo of an open FW earlier:
Disassembled and reassembled a shimano MF-TZ20freewheel