I tried my new Iron Forge in league last night. The league uses challenge patterns instead of a typical house shot. The current pattern is 39 ft, flatish(4.5 to 1 ratio) that reminds me somewhat of the Nationals team shot the past couple of tournaments.


I threw the Iron Forge in shadow four shots and put it right back in the bag. It has a crazy helter-skelter personality on the fresh(for me) and I could not seem to judge how far left to line up to stay on the right side of the head pin. Everything just blasted left as soon as it exited the pattern and crossed over.


So I started the set with my trusty Forge Fire for the first game and most of the second. Of course, following the current "craze" of urethane we had a couple of bowlers using them on our pair(to little success I might add). By the end of the second game I started thinking about how the pattern was transitioning and brought the Iron Forge back out of the bag as the Fire was beginning to lose it's ability to turn the corner down lane with the typical urethane slop extending the pattern.


The Iron Forge shines for me in this role. It's a latter-in-the-set, move deeper and wheel it monster. It seems to thrive in the urethane push down, which calms down the ridiculous left-hand turn personality I experienced on the fresh.


I will try it on a fresh house shot later this week and suspect it will be a good ball to start with if I move an arrow or so deeper than I normally play to let it do it's thing. But I expect a few washout and splits, so it will be on a short leash before heading back to the bag.


Do I think everyone needs one? Nope. Will it always be in my bag? Nope, I can't see it being useful on lighter or short patterns. But if you have some oil, longer patterns that seem to keep your ball from making the turn or a lot of urethane pushing down the oil, then the Iron Forge is a good answer in my opinion.




FYI, I am NOT a staffer.

Nice write up milo.

I've got a pin up and pin down one drilled, haven't gotten a ton of games on either yet, but here's initial thoughts:
Pin down one is 3.75x60 with finish at 2000, it rolls nice on the house patterns locally (but what doesn't), not super flashy, blends the lane out a bit. Pin up one I drilled 60x4.75x25 (like I drill all my symmetrical stuff anymore) and it's really strong off friction, and so far been a bit too over under to really get me to use it much yet on the fresh, but twice i've hit game 3 in league though and had a good look as the lanes opened up and I moved inside with it. It's a bit wild off they dry, and a bit too weak in the puddle though so probably going to knock the factory surface down a bit on the pin up one as well and see if that helps.

I will say this though, they definitely are a step down from my Pride's, but stronger than my Shock and Ripcord Velocity, but i'm not exactly sure where they'll fit in my tournament bag. It's early, they have shown signs, and definitely give the strong pearl symmetric look I didn't have in my bag, but i'm not sure how big of a hole that really is. I'll get some games on different patterns in soon and report back more, and definitely will be tinkering with surface.

Little video from practice, though the local house pattern makes everything look awfully similar unfortunately: