Sanding or polishing a ball will give your ball a different reaction on the lanes and maybe help you when you get in to trouble, ill better explain these steps on sanding and polishing.

1.       First we will start with sanding a ball. The reasons for sanding a ball could be that your ball is scratched making your ball less consistent, another way is you want your ball to hook more down the lane. The reason you sand a ball during league is that your ball isn’t hooking enough and you need some extra power so you go to your bag a pull out a piece of sand paper, now it really matters what kind of sand paper you use. 180 grit will remove the deepest Scratches, 360 grit removing deep scratches, 500 grit will remove medium scratches, 2000 grit will give you a mild luster with texture underneath and for 4000 girt high luster with smooth texture. So when using sand paper, 500 girt is the most common one used on bowling balls, while 180 and 360 grits are to low and 2000 and 4000 grits are for polishing balls.
2. So take a towel and place the sand paper in the middle, we do this because it won’t make a mess when your sanding, then you take your ball and place it on the paper. Now you start rubbing the ball like your trying to clean it make sure you get the entire ball sanded, it should only take a few minutes to complete this job. After sanding you will see your ball hook more and arch more as well.
3. This task of sanding your bowling balls should not be taken lightly cause one wrong more can cause your ball to react different, so if you don’t want to risk doing it yourself you can all ways take your ball to your pro shop and they will sand your ball for you.

Now ill explain how to polish your ball and what the advanage of doing it is. There are a few ways of polishing your bowling ball, one is to go and buy some rub on polish or sand your ball.

1. The first way and the easiest way are to go to your pro shop and have them polish your ball for you. The next way is to go out and find some ball polisher and do it yourself. All you have to do is rub your ball down with the polisher and you will be set.

If your ball is hooking too much and you need something that goes a little longer you would need a pearl bowling ball, but instead of buying a new ball you could just take your bowling ball that is a solid or was a pearl and give it a nice polish. By polishing your ball you take your ball that has a lot of friction on the lanes, and tone it down cause a polish ball is smother and will slide more because it can’t grip the lane as much making this method vital for dryer lanes, or for high rev bowlers. But polishing your ball will not last forever, by polishing your ball you’re getting rid of all the makes and scratches on the cover stock. Now when your pro shop polishes your ball they take 1000-2000 grit sand paper and sand your ball till smooth and shiny.

Remember once you sand or polish your ball it will be a while till its back to normal.

When bowling on your league you sometimes find it hard to keep your ball from hooking too much or to less. If you’re a bowler like me with a high rev rate (my rev rate is 550) you need to find a speed to throw. Now I bowl league at many different places and you must find a speed to keep your ball on track. Now I bowl at little falls MN, and that has a dryer house shot, so when I’m bowling I use my ball that hooks a lot I will throw anywhere between 18-20, but when I bowl on a oilier shot I tend to slow it down to 16-18 mph. when you have a high rev rate you will need to throw at higher speeds or you will need to get less reactive balls. On the other hand if you throw that ball slow with a lower rev rate you will need to throw a higher reactive ball.

            Your rev rate will determine what balls you will throw and your ball speed will tell you the same thing, but when finding out what works better that will have to be you that decides that, because every one throws a little different. So when you have a high rev rate you normally throw fast and a lower rev rate you would throw slower.

There are a few questions in bowling that are hard to answer and some that are easy, when bowling is it better to have more length or better to have less length. The answer is not an easy one, it’s a long road to find out what’s better but I have a few easy steps to help you find out what’s better for your game. Let’s start by asking what kind of lanes you bowl on wood, synthetic, or something in between. Next is do you bowl league, sport league or tournaments. Last is are the lanes dry, oily, long, short, or flat. Let’s start by saying when bowling remember that some balls are made to go long and some aren’t like pearls go longer then solids. Why do ball go long and some don’t, well solids are designed to create friction so they can still hook on oily lanes, where pearls are designed to have less friction and to store energy  so when the ball hits the dry to have a nice reaction off that dry. So if your bowling with solid ball that is drilled to hook early you might get it trouble by leaving taps (pins left when hitting the pocket). The reason this happens is cause when a ball is drilled to hook early on dryer lanes its cause the ball will hook early and after that the ball is done hooking and goes into a roll or a roll out phase, so when hitting the pocket you might leave a ten pin (for righties) that’s cause the ball will deflect having the 6 pin lay in the channel or go around the ten. So if your ball rolls out early that makes your carry worse, why when a ball rolls out it means it’s done hooking and making the ball defect instead of hooking threw the pocked.  So you might want to change ball to something drilled to go longer. This is where pearls come in. when using pearls they will go longer and hit harder on dryer lanes, so instead of leaving ten pins you will have better Carrie. Why dose pearl Carrie better on dry lanes, it’s cause when solids hook earlier then pearls they use their energy up before getting to the pocket, where pearls will go past the front part of the lane before hooking, cause pearls go long they don’t tend to roll out, which makes your carry better cause all of the energy that pearls save.

            Now if you bowling on oily lanes that are long (like 40-44ft long) with a solid ball drilled to hook early you might see your ball arch as the ball goes down the lane and when the ball hits the pocket it’s still rolling. Why is this, well its cause when there is more oil a ball like a solid will have more energy when it hits that pocket cause oil makes the balls go down the lane without hooking but the reason is oil making a higher friction ball like a solid go longer before hooking. So if you would throw a pearl down the lane on the same oily shot you might see wash outs, buckets, or weak tens. Why is this, its cause unlike dryer lanes the pearls will go longer so if you have a 42” shot your pearl might blow past that with a ton of energy left but there won’t be enough lane for the ball to hook then, making the ball go to long and not hook.

            Maybe you bowl on a shot that’s not oily and that’s not dry, then what do you do. Well if your bowling and your using a pearl and you are leaving pocket seven pins or maybe pocket 7-10s, this means your ball is going too far down the lane before hitting the pocket, how does that happen, well when your ball goes to long and hits the pocket it might look good but when your ball hits the pocket at the angle it has a lot of energy left so it will roll threw the pocket, but when the ball rolls threw the 1-3(for righties) it will not deflect as much causing the six pin to go around the ten and the five to go behind or in front of the seven pin. So if you would change to a solid your ball would hook early, and hit the pocket at the right angle. Maybe it’s the other way around, your using a solid and your leaving a lot of four pins and haven a hard time keeping the ball in the pocket cause your ball is hooking too much, if you would go to a pearl your ball would go farther down the lane making it easier to hit the pocket.

Telly’s Photo is photos taken by Shantel  . She is almost a business but not quite . Located in Little falls MN, 56345. If your looking for good pictures and at a good price just contract her  at her e-mail ziggy842#hotmail.com

Knowing the lanes you bowl on is key to bowling well.

Every bowling lane is 60ft long and is 40 boards wide. There are arrows about 15ft down the lane, the arrows are 5 boards apart, 5 from the gutter and 5 from the other arrows. The next thing is that the pocket on both sides of the lane is at the 17.5 board. The Boards are added on each side 0-20 and they meet at the head pin with is the 20th board.

OK, now if you’re league bowling and you don’t bowl on any PBA oil patterns, you should know that on any league shot, that the outside part of the lane is dry and the middle is oily. When you’re bowling you should always find out where the dryer part of the lane is.

Now on to the different types of lanes.
Now there are a few different types on lanes out there. There are wood, synthetic, wood synthetic, and guardian.
Wood lanes tend to have higher friction and faster hooking conditions. synthetic lanes will have a smother reaction, but synthetic lanes will also make it much easier to hook the ball. Synthetic lanes are easy to bowl on than wood lanes. Now wood synthetic (WS) lanes can be hard to bowl on. WS is two different lanes put together. The lanes could be the first 30ft could be wood or the other way around, by doing this the lanes make up many different reactions.