BallReviews
General Category => PBA => Topic started by: riggs on July 08, 2013, 07:59:37 AM
-
Here's the blog with details on Brian Valenta's win this weekend. Still seeking the answer to who was the last person was to win a PBA title with a hard rubber ball and when was it?
The 11th Frame: Two-hander Brian Valenta makes history winning PBA Regional with hard rubber ball
http://www.11thframe.com/page/blog_id_5946
-
Anybody know where there is footage of him throwing this thing?
-
No coverage of this weekend's Regional.
-
Good blog as always, Riggs. I had the pleasure of being there to watch on Sunday. As this is my home house, I can confirm that there is definitely hang outside. The normal league THS plays a little tougher than most because of it. It was a tough break on the 7-10. Too bad you couldn't call in Tackett to pick it up like he did earlier in the day. And now I gotta find myself a Black Beauty!
-
LOL. Thanks. Maybe if I could throw it as hard as youngsters like E.J. I could pick up the 7-10!
-
Riggs, missed you at the Shark 6 gamer. Brian won there too, but must have left the BB in the car, lol. That guy has Perma Beast mode. Always on.
-
Several years ago I reported of bowling in my home house that on weekends I would throw a reactive and at the end of the head shot(15 foot application) the ball would actually jump up and cross 3 boards in the air the sideways.
Finally one weekend I saw a good Lefty throwing on the weekend withOUT the normal lefty ball jumping. He shot about 680 practicing.
I talked to the center and they let me take an old rubber, put fingertips and I had found my new weekend ball. Better than a Plastic XXXL which hooked too much and too early.
The rubber made dry dry after 15 feet of oil application seem like a nice 40 foot league shot. Thank you very much.
In general it was not enough for normal league shot, 15 foot of new fresh head oil. However, it was great for the weekend!
REgards,
Luckylefty
-
Riggs, missed you at the Shark 6 gamer. Brian won there too, but must have left the BB in the car, lol. That guy has Perma Beast mode. Always on.
Perma Beast Mode for eating Cheeseburgers and crave cases from white castle!!! haha, no, i've known BV for a long time and it isn't shocking he whacked them with the black beauty. He did that in a few college tournaments as well, and also with a Dick Weber 5 star off the rack (I will never forget that tournament, zero look at the practice session, grab the 5 star off the rack, throw it every game of the tournament and get 2nd individually) SILLY!
-
I think that's amazing. Amazing bowling, Valenta.
-
I still have an old Black Diamond in my garage. About 5 years ago I took it down to the last night of a late league in an old anvil lane house. I shot 670 with it after a 170 start where I basically played outside the track. By the end of the night I had swing at 15 board and was blowing racks with my sub 300 rev rate.
Over the years I have found hard rubber to be better than plastic on a lot of patterns, especially longer patterns that have really dried out inside.
-
Riggs, missed you at the Shark 6 gamer. Brian won there too, but must have left the BB in the car, lol. That guy has Perma Beast mode. Always on.
I saw on Facebook that he won. My Raisin body was done after the Regional was over ... and I had to get home to get some sleep so I could be to work at 5 a.m. Monday.
-
Being a youngster on this site, what is the difference between rubber, urethane, and plastic? I already know the difference between urethane and plastic. But iwa s wondering how they match up to rubber.
-
There have been 3 basic shell compositions over the last 80 years in the game. Brunswick introduced the hard rubber ball and it became the standard in the game for over 30 years. Around 1960 Brunswick, and Columbia ( then a fledgling company in Ephrata Washington ) introduced a polyester plastic shell ball.
The plastic became a significant factor as lane finishes were getting increasingly harder and urethane lane finish replaced lacquer around 1970. About this time Don Johnson became a force on the PBA tour using a Columbia polyester ball, and in no time everyone was throwing the plastic balls, with hard rubber relegated to the background.
In 1980 AMF introduced the first urethane ( technically polyurethane ) ball, the Angle. While, technically speaking it too is a form of plastic, the friction characteristic of urethane compared to polyester were different, especially if the shell was roughed up. Urethane balls soon replaced polyester in much the way polyester replaced hard rubber as the ball of choice.
In 1991 it was discovered that enhancing urethane with resin additives changed the friction characteristics in an even more useful manner than was the case for pure urethane. Once again the landscape changed as resin became the gold standard for bowling ball shells.
-
You forgot to mention before ABC/USBC started the hardness testing in the 70's that they had the soakers that they used and that's really started the experimentation of coverstock manipulations, which lead to the invention of the softer shelled balls like the Sur D and some others! Just my $.02, Bruce
-
This was very informative as i did learn some things. But i was looking for the comparison of ball motion and hook potential on today's dryer conditions that bowlers face when reactives are out of play.
-
This was very informative as i did learn some things. But i was looking for the comparison of ball motion and hook potential on today's dryer conditions that bowlers face when reactives are out of play.
Generally speaking, from weakest to strongest:
Rubber, plastic, urethane, reactive.
Also, on older balls, softness/hardness may be a consideration. They instituted the hardness rule after the Sur-D, I believe, so before that rule you may find some older balls with softness below the current limit and you may find some balls with very high hardness ratings.
-
Throw your hardest plastic ball. Hard rubber will hook less. Also old-time hard rubber balls like what Brian was throwing have no flare. Many plastics made today do have some flare.
-
I really need to get my old Hard rubber Ace Pro drilled just to see if I can hook it at all. My old Ace Plastic ball did have some weight to it and with a bit of roughing up I could get it to hook pretty well, even swing it a bit if it was really dry. I've actually never thrown a true Urethane but I may buy one for the hell of it once to try it out, I love drilling and throwing old equipment.
My suggestion to is if you want to get an idea of the different era's is to check out youtube. Just type in Dick Weber and then go from there. There are matches going back as far as the 50's on there. Just work your way up the decades and you will see the change.
One of my other favorites is Pete Weber's first televised match. He was 17 at the time and I believe he would of be been throwing Urethane although I could be wrong and it was still plastic. Basically anything prior to 91 would be the non reactive stuff.
-
It is tough to really compare, because the lane surfaces, oils, and overall volume of oil was totally different in the plastic and rubber ball days. Plastic came in to vogue when the harder urethane lane finishes replaced lacquer. I bowled with both polyester and hard rubber on lacquer, and the ball reaction was not much different. However on urethane finish the plastic, which even in its harder versions was softer than hard rubber, reacted more. As they learned the tricks of softening the polyester even more, it became more effective.
The interesting thing is that resin additives with todays urethane balls has much the same effect as softening the shells on the old polyester balls did, but the resins don't soften the urethane.