I have a Deuce and a Reaction Rev. Both these balls have resided in the "main bag" for the last year. They have been very reliable buddies on league night. I clean them regularly after use, and perform general maintenance about once a month. Three weeks ago the deuce spent 24 hours in Hook Again.

Well, the deuce worked great for about 10 games after the hook again. But both balls now do not have the firm, assertive roll to them that they once had, and I even took one of them out of the main bag. I'm ready to take the other one out too.

But how do I check vital signs to know for sure that I'm not going to bury one of these balls while there's still a sign of life?

Lefty, she said she put it in Hook Again for 24 hrs. which would be the Ebonite system and you say to try the new Ebonite system. Is there another system now out that is different than the Hook Again? If not, then she already did what you told her to do.
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Lane 1 - The Bowlers Company

Nothing hits as hard as an Uranium

I think there is at least two major reasons for the loss of ball reaction of todays bowlingballs.

Oil absorbtion into the shell whereby additional absorbtion is restricted is what is being discussed here. I beleive the removal of this oil from the shell by various methods available today is simply not very effective. While it may remove a percentage of oil I personally think that it is not very substantial.

However, I dont believe that this is the major cause for loss of performance. The problem I think is the shell surface becomes warn with use. The dimples become flaten which in itself denys the ball the ability to penetrate through the oil and touch the lane surface. Resurfacing simply scratches the surface and fills in the original dimples and therefore I dont think there exsists a method to restore the orignal surface.

Therefore I personally believe the following:

Balls have three catagories and we cannot alter them and we need to move them into the appropriate catagories effectively.

1. Max Performance - New balls (depending on shell composition) have a maximum performance for a very limited number of games (until the surface has been altered (smoothed) by use). Probally 50-75 games and that is that. Once you have this number of games, despite the maintanence of cleaning and deep cleaning, the ball has to move to the next level of peformance.

2. Medium Performance - Once balls loose the original shell surface it cant go back to original. However they dont get much worse because of the ability to resurface. Once a ball is moved into this catagory it should be resurfaced to determine its continued performance. It should remain at this level for another 100-200 games and should be resurfaced a couple time during this period to sustain a consistant reaction.

3. Low Performance - After several resurfaces and after 250-300 games the ball is completely saturated and deep cleaning does not have an effective result. At this point the ball will the ball it is. It still can be a very usefull ball in an arsenal for when there is low volumes of oil.

Deep cleaning should be done on balls at regular intervals no matter which of the top two levels. How often and which method is up to you.
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