Bowling ball conspiracy.

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b3y0nd3r
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Bowling ball conspiracy.

Post by b3y0nd3r »

Please forgive me if I offend anyone with this post!

Please keep in mind I am NOT a PSO, just a bowler. Also, I am just going by what was heard on a youtube video by a guy who sells bowling ball cleaners and polishes(his own brand I think).

In one of his videos, he claims that all new bowling balls have a "special fluid" in them and as that drys out over time, causing your bowling ball to lose reaction. You buy a new bowling ball and the cycle repeats.

I would hope this isn't true. I know that surface degrades with time and oil absorbs into bowling balls. Both of these issues are easily fixed(IMO).

I know many here and elsewhere stress the fact that their ball "Lost reaction".

Is there ANY merit to this?

Thanks in advance!
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Re: Bowling ball conspiracy.

Post by 44boyd »

It’s hard to replicate “new” ball reaction with what they say is out of box 500/polish or whatever. It’s why as you learn, that most change the surface of the ball before they throw the first shot as that reaction can be repeated. IMO people are afraid of using surface but like to complain when their ball sails past the break point.
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Re: Bowling ball conspiracy.

Post by MeNoRevs »

b3y0nd3r wrote:Please forgive me if I offend anyone with this post!

Please keep in mind I am NOT a PSO, just a bowler. Also, I am just going by what was heard on a youtube video by a guy who sells bowling ball cleaners and polishes(his own brand I think).

In one of his videos, he claims that all new bowling balls have a "special fluid" in them and as that drys out over time, causing your bowling ball to lose reaction. You buy a new bowling ball and the cycle repeats.

I would hope this isn't true. I know that surface degrades with time and oil absorbs into bowling balls. Both of these issues are easily fixed(IMO).

I know many here and elsewhere stress the fact that their ball "Lost reaction".

Is there ANY merit to this?

Thanks in advance!
Your probably talking about Ron Hickland and the case of plasticizers.

You can prove that there is a liquid in a new ball by taking a strong magnifying glass and press down on the cover stock of a new ball, and you will see a oil released. As soon as you take the knife off, you will see the oil soak back into the bowling ball.

Over time, plasticizers do in fact dry out or come out during de-oiling process (all that oils that come out is not just lane oil).

I dont think there is much you can do to recover this, unless there is a product that carries those specific plasticizers (every company uses their own special blend of polys and iso's with plastisizers) but it does seem like Ron H. has a product that helps rejuvenate a coverstock by doing so, not sure if its just marketing or not.
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Re: Bowling ball conspiracy.

Post by b3y0nd3r »

MeNoRevs wrote:
Your probably talking about Ron Hickland and the case of plasticizers.

You can prove that there is a liquid in a new ball by taking a strong magnifying glass and press down on the cover stock of a new ball, and you will see a oil released. As soon as you take the knife off, you will see the oil soak back into the bowling ball.

Over time, plasticizers do in fact dry out or come out during de-oiling process (all that oils that come out is not just lane oil).

I dont think there is much you can do to recover this, unless there is a product that carries those specific plasticizers (every company uses their own special blend of polys and iso's with plastisizers) but it does seem like Ron H. has a product that helps rejuvenate a coverstock by doing so, not sure if its just marketing or not.
Then the question becomes, what effect to these plasticizers have on ball reaction?
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Re: Bowling ball conspiracy.

Post by MeNoRevs »

b3y0nd3r wrote:
Then the question becomes, what effect to these plasticizers have on ball reaction?
Quite a bit, without plasticizers, these balls would be just urethane covers.
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Re: Bowling ball conspiracy.

Post by b3y0nd3r »

MeNoRevs wrote:
Quite a bit, without plasticizers, these balls would be just urethane covers.
I just read a whole thread on this. According to that thread, that statement isn't true:

Here's an interesting post on this subject from pba.com!

Enjoy!

There seems to be a popular misconception that plasticizers in a ball are inherently required to get the ball response (hook)that bowlers expect. This is a half truth. Certain plasticizers may be added to the coverstock resin to control hardness and/or the coefficient of friction, but these are chemically reacted into the polymer network. For all practical purposes, they do not migrate in or out of the ball. They are locked in place.

However, to make the balls porous, the ball manufacturer adds a non-reactive plasticizer into the mix as well. This plasticizer cannot and does not get locked in place. Its sole purpose is to worm its way out of the ball as the coverstock solidifies during the curing process leaving behind micropores in the cover that the non-reactive plasticizer left behind as it migrated to the surface. It is these pores that soak up lane oil and promote more hook by sucking up oil from the ball surface that is in contact with the lane surface. This is the reason why a never used new ball can be baked and oil will come to the surface. That oil is really non-reactive plasticizer that never quite made it out of the ball at the plant. This type of plasticizer is not a hook enhancer by its presence, but rather by its absence.
The situation posed in this thread where an old retired ball suddenly seems to have new life is most probably due to the fact that the lane oil that had been lodged in the pores of the ball has had sufficient time to: 1)evaporate, 2)environmentally degrade, or 3)to slowly be absorbed into the core of the ball leaving the pores once again open to absorb more oil.
If you want to keep your ball in good performance condition, clean it after every use and occasionally give it a light resurfacing to open up the pores that had become clogged with lane grim.
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Re: Bowling ball conspiracy.

Post by boomer »

I'm sorry - Ron's theory just doesn't jive. (took long enough to write this that what was a reply to the reference to Ron's video got bumped way down. . . DOH)


A: The ONLY source I can find for Ron's theory is . . . Ron. When there is ONE source for something like this. . . and I'm GOOD at finding stuff like this. . . then there's a problem.

B: His video is misleading, but I don't think intentionally so. He shows what plasticizer looks like in water and, lo, it looks like oil. Well, that's because it IS an oil. It's a hydrocarbon, which is what all oils are. OK, technically it's an ester of an alcohol, but it reacts with water the same as a typical oil because that's a hydrocarbon, i.e. an oil.

C: Plasticizers don't really DO much of anything after curing. They are volatile and evaporate during the curing process (typically an exothermic reaction) and what is left gets driven off due to abrasion and migration (you'd call it the "new car smell")

D: he attributes the cracking to a loss of plasticizer. The amount of plasticizer left in a bowling ball, according to Mo, is small.

E: He doesn't look at the construction of the ball for the reason the ball cracked. Ebonite addressed this in a bulletin talking about heating and cooling of a ball. When you have a three part ball (block, core, cover) the cover and core are two different materials with different temperature reactions. This temperature differential means that if you heat and cool it, there is a risk of those two materials reacting at different speeds. If the cover cools faster than the core, it WILL create significant stresses on the cover and it can crack. Plasticizers are included to prevent this (their purpose is to keep some flexibility in a plastic) but they can only go so far. Remember, cooling means contraction. If the cover cools while the core and block are still hot (expanded) then the cover has little choice but to split. This is why we first don't heat the balls very much (120-130 or so, one machine goes up to 150) and then we DO NOT COOL THEM QUICKLY to reduce the heat differential between cover and core.


Plasticizers keep a polymer flexible and help to create the pores in our balls that absorb the oils. The plasticizers that created those pores evaporate upon curing leaving those pores, according to Mo. These pores (and their moonlike craters and surfaces) create our balls' friction.

If we had no plasticizer, our balls would be hard. They would crack upon COOLING (the shear strength of plastics gets worse upon COOLING, not heating) and that temperature point would be very warm comparatively (most of the graphs I've seen show a pretty radical jump around 0 to -10C but with a plasticizer that slope moves left quite a bit. Really, it's the shore value, the hardness/brittleness that moves, but the slope of the curve is what interests us here.) Balls (and plastics / polymers) don't breack/crack upon WARMING, they do so because of temperature differential (internal vs. external) upon COOLING.


As to how our balls would react if we got rid of the plasticizers left in our balls? Since nearly all of a plasticizer's effect seems to come upon curing (the elements of the polymer are mixed using the plasticizer as the suspension medium) and most of the plasticizer is evaporated away during curing, the ball would get more brittle and more hard. But probably not a significant amount as most of the remaining plasticizer is still suspended within the ball.

Sources:
Description of the Texanol patent: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6407201.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://bowlingknowledge.info/index.php? ... view&id=32" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
https://www.ptonline.com/articles/new-p ... -cold-heat" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasticizer" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (of course)
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Re: Bowling ball conspiracy.

Post by EricHartwell »

A damp sponge will absorb liquid better than a dry sponge.

So it it is like the reactive urethane is a primed sponge.
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