Guess this is most closely related to coverstock...  I had a guy bring a ball into the shop a while back with the fingers all cracked out.  There were chunks missing around the grips, etc.  He stated that he really liked the ball and the reaction and wanted the fingers fixed.  We took the ball, popped the grips out, drilled out the bad areas with cracks etc and were left with a rather large hole.  Since our experience told us that large holes tend not to plug very well as one solid piece, we filled about 1/2 of the hole with material, let it set, then finished the job with the second half.  Cut the plug down, everything looked good and re-drilled the fingers.  The guy came in, picked up the ball, and was happy with the results.

About a week later, the same guy returned with the ball and all the plug work had cracked out again, as bad, if not worse than before.  At the time we had been finishing up some older plug material (DBA) and had just received a brand new shipment of Ebonite plug...so we sort of thought maybe the plug didn't set 100% correct because it was old or something (although we never really had any major problems before)...  replugged the ball with ebonite plug material, redrilled it and gave it back...

This one lasted a little longer (about 2 weeks), but basically the same results, fingers entirely cracked out... pieces of plug missing, etc.  Pretty ugly...  

The guy is a full-roller and tracks pretty close (although not over) the fingers.  I sort of think that the ball may be contacting the pins in the area of the finger grips, which is causing this cracking problem.  Is there anything we can do to make the plug material more durable?  Or is this ball/layout doomed to fail???

Thanks,
S^2
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