BallReviews
General Category => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: LowRG on December 26, 2015, 07:50:07 PM
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Anyone have any information as to a harder plastic ball? I know the original ice storm was >90 but other than that, I can't seem to locate any hardness info.
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Haven't paid much attention to hardness since urethane came out in 1981. Back then they varied some from batch to batch, especially on the softer end. Yellow dots were typically 76-80. White dots around 82-85. Columbia was making something that came in around 90 during the 80's, but I don't remember. Once they approached 85 you couldn't tell much difference in performance anyway.
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When I got my Columbia Blue Dot, it was supposedly the hardest ball made at that time(1998 or so).
I see they don't make it anymore. I imagine any plastic spare ball these days is about the same as any other, but I would be curious is there is any difference.
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It was a point of advertising when the original ice storm came out, that it was over 90 (92 I think) hardness. Just curious if anyone had inside info.
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Spare Storm was a hard ball too. All balls over 88 hardness have an issue with chipping since they're so hard.
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Spare Storm was a hard ball too. All balls over 88 hardness have an issue with chipping since they're so hard.
I just logged in to ask if the harder the ball, the more brittle it might be but you posted before I got to this. :)
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Yeah, use a regular plastic ball and hit it with turtle wax or something. Done.
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Yeah, use a regular plastic ball and hit it with turtle wax or something. Done.
Just out of curiosity,
what do you think the wax will do to a plastic ball that help reduce the amount of hook?
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In my experience, it makes a ball with a "softer" cover ignore everything like a harder surface ball without the chipping issues.
Also protects it from sun damage and water spots. :p
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In my experience, it makes a ball with a "softer" cover ignore everything like a harder surface ball without the chipping issues.
Also protects it from sun damage and water spots. :p
I busted at this^
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In my experience, it makes a ball with a "softer" cover ignore everything like a harder surface ball without the chipping issues.
Also protects it from sun damage and water spots. :p
Interesting.
I thought you were going to say something like, it reduces hook by closing the pores, AND I was going to say that polyester hook doesn't work that way. I'm glad we avoided that.
I never tried wax on a plastic ball.
When my original Blue Dot (hardness 88-92) started hooking too much even after re-polishing, I sanded it to 4000 grit, then sanded it with a White Trizact pad (grit: ~ 6000 - 8000) and then re-polished it. Then it hooked a lot less.
These days I use a T-Zone; I find it to crack the least out of any of the plastic balls. I tried the original Spare Storm because of its hardness, but it was far too brittle.
I hesitate to try your wax method because I depend on my T-Zone hooking a little bit to make some spares, like the 3/6/10, 2/4/5, 2/4/5/8 and some splits. I can throw it pretty straight when oil irregularities warrant.
Thanks for the tip, though.
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Many of you guys don't even remember the old Lustre King polishing machines, but buffing with a wax compound was how polyester balls were polished during that era. Those machines didn't work at all on urethane because the friction of the urethane surface tended to burn up the motors on the machines.