Ball cracking in front of my eyes

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VLe
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Ball cracking in front of my eyes

Post by VLe »

Last week I had an awful experience with one Radical Yeti Unleashed. It slowly cracked in front of my eyes and I was unable to save it. This ball is few years old but had only few games played with it. I was going to plug and re-drill this ball for my friend. The ball has always kept inside in a steady temperature. When I took the finger inserts away, I noticed that the pin was already broken inside the ball propably when the fingers was drilled (by local PSO).

I started to take the beveling away from the finger hole edges with bevel knife before plugging the holes. The ball cracked from the bridge and from the RF to the pin at the same time. Then I thought that ok this can still be easily fixed. Then I noticed that the crack from RF to pin was slowly progressing further.

Here is a video that I took when the first crack was developing. You can see that the crack is slowly getting further:

[youtube][/youtube]

There was about 5/16” between the pin and RF. In the video it looks less because I scraped some surface already off after the crack was born. I ran to my garage after the video to drill a hole at the end of the crack to stop it and it worked…for few minutes. Then the ball cracked from the other side almost halfway in front of my eyes. Unbelievable. The other crack was progressing slowly further too so I drilled another hole through the coverstock there also. Now after some days the crack is a bit more open but the drilled holes prevented it to get any further.

When I drilled the second hole through the coverstock, it kind of started to chip when I got through the surface with drill bit. There’s something strange in it. I put some picture of this attached to this post.

Another thing that I have noticed is that the ball manufacturers have started to add the rule, where drilled holes should be at least 1” away from the pin to remain warranty. I think this is way too much for many layouts and in most cases it would be the best to drill the pin away.
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PAP 4 3/8" x 0"
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320-360 rev rate
17mph off hand
LittleTiger
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Re: Ball cracking in front of my eyes

Post by LittleTiger »

Did you btw wash this ball using ultrasonic?

"Big boys" are told to me that if you leave used ball to rack for too long time oil on ball will make it crack and only way to avoid it is play using it time to time but I was thinking that probably ultrasonic wash would help avoid it.
SomyP
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Re: Ball cracking in front of my eyes

Post by SomyP »

I think the best way to save a ball other than to use it is to clean it regularly. Also don't know if there's fact to the myth but I've heard glue to hold inserts in could potentially cause the ball to crack due to the glue reacting the temperatures. I've stopped using grips and I've had balls crack with grips and without grips.
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VLe
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Joined: April 15th, 2015, 7:07 am
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Preferred Company: Radical
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Re: Ball cracking in front of my eyes

Post by VLe »

LittleTiger wrote:Did you btw wash this ball using ultrasonic?
No, I didnt wash this anyhow. The ball has only few games on it though and it was regularily cleaned after throwing.

Now the ball actually has a crack going all the way around the ball. It seemed like the coverstock was in very high tension. Like the core part was expanded pushing the crack more open until it went all the way around the ball.

Most likely this is caused by a long time of not using the ball. But it still amazed me because I have never experienced this type of cracking while doing something for the ball. As soon as the first 1/2" crack was born it was like the ball was doomed. I couldnt do anything to stop it. :|

Btw, does some ball manufacturer make thicker coverstocks nowadays? In some older balls the reactive coverstocks were like 2" thick but now i have seen the coverstocks being very thin. I wonder if this could be one reason causing so many cracked coverstocks lately...
Right Handed
PAP 4 3/8" x 0"
60* rotation
17.5* tilt
320-360 rev rate
17mph off hand
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