Stole this from Bowling Chat:
From Mo Pinel:
Balls with highly polished smooth surfaces will go the other way because bowling with them will add fine scratches to the surface. If you test for surface changes through bowling, your results will be entirely different on wood and synthetic lane surfaces. If you bowl on old original Brunswick Anvilane and Brunswick System 2000, bowling will add deeper scratches because those worn synthetics have aluminum oxide exposed, which sands the ball. It is very surface specific as to which surface roughness balls will migrate to. There's the whole truth. You deserved to know it.
OP said in the thread:
Had a chance to use the Jayhawk surface scanner yesterday and was very surprised with the results. I scanned the following balls:
Storm Reign 3000 sia 15 games ago scanned 5300
Marvel 500/2000 Black Magic polish 6 games ago scanned 5263
Nano 500/1500 Black Magic 10 games ago scanned 4862
Taboo pearl burned with white pad scanned 4739
Frantic off the shelf scanned 5800
And a guy brought his Nano in after a 3 game set to see how much the surface had changed. Before bowling it scanned 1850. After just 3 games it scanned 4200!!! I was shocked. Quite interesting to say the least.
Just thought I'd share that for free.
(Personally) I've seen all that. I have no problems with any of that. I don't doubt it.
99.99% of bowlers, who are aware of this idea, will never check their balls after 3 games. Most will start thinking about it somewhere in the 25 - 75 game range or when they see polish removed. By then most balls will wear int he 2000 grit range, ranging from 1000 - 3000, more or less due to the lane surface and other factors.
Bowling on very lightly oiled AMF HPL and 15 year old Brunswick Anvllanes, when I clean my polished balls, remove the oil and the oil shine, and see that the polished surface has been smoothed dull after 6 games of league, I know something's wrong.