Alcohol is fine for many types of dirt, but there are some that it won't remove and it certainly never removes lane oil. As a general purpose cleaner, you need something stronger and more purposeful than alcohol. There are many bowling ball specific cleaners that are better at general purpose ball cleaning, be it urethane,, polyester or resin. Look for Valentino's Remedy, Black Magic Rejuvenator, Knock-Out, Zapp-It, and Lane Masters cleaner.

As for hooking early, cleaning will not likely cure that unless you have lots of rubber belt marks on the ball. Either use a finer finish on the ball, i.e. if it's sanded to 1000 grit, take it to 2000, 2500, or 3000 grit or if it's already at a high grit, add a dose of polish to get more length and less overall hook.

I'm going to jump in this one for answers. I have a terrible time keeping my Natural clean as well, both in between shots and after bowling. It will sit there and sweat out oil in my bag after I wipe it clean.

Urethanes absorb oil at a much lower rate than resins will; so most times oil will just sit on the ball. You should clean it off before putting it back int he bag. if you have an extraordinarily high number of games on it, you could have absorbed some oil, but urethanes don't depend on oil absorption, like resins do, for their hooking ability. Just use a good oil cleaner like Clean and Dull, Hook-It or Lane Masters cleaner to remove that oil.

Quote from: charlest on October 01, 2013, 07:27:34 AM

Urethanes absorb oil at a much lower rate than resins will; so most times oil will just sit on the ball. You should clean it off before putting it back int he bag. if you have an extraordinarily high number of games on it, you could have absorbed some oil, but urethanes don't depend on oil absorption, like resins do, for their hooking ability. Just use a good oil cleaner like Clean and Dull, Hook-It or Lane Masters cleaner to remove that oil.

I always wipe the ball off in between frames and once every couple weeks I use clean and dull on it. But it still seems to weep oil out while its in my bag for a few days. I bought the ball used, single drill, but don't have a clue how many games are actually on it.

As I said, it is possible for it have absorbed oil over the years. Got to a local pro shop that has a Rejuvenator and have the do an oil extraction. Or buy your own, like this one:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BCQ0YG6/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=