Banning of balance holes... can anyone shed some light??

[walc]

Can anyone shed any light on the following...


QUOTED from NOY from Hammer Bowling Forum

I think this is the jist of it:

The USBC tried passing a rule that limited the bowler to placing the CG no more than an inch away from the center of the grip. In turn, this left the bowler with the option of only being able to choose the pin placement. Brunswick immediately retaliated with their "CG nomaddah" concept as they demonstrated that the placement of the CG has very little effect on the reaction of the bowling ball. There is a video of this on brunswick's site.

http://www.brunswickbowling.com/product_videos

Then the USBC tried passing a second rule that banned X-Holes. Brunswick retaliated again in demonstrating that with today's high tech equipment, the X-Hole has very little effect on how the ball reacts to the lane. Again, there's a video of this on Brunswick's site.

http://www.brunswickbowling.com/product_videos

Note that these rules never even made it past the first stage. (Whatever that may be)

After talking to my driller about this, he agrees that the CG doesnt matter. In fact, he informed me that Pro Shops and Manufacturers are trying to get rid of the CG mark and instead, use the Pin and Mass Bias (however measurable it may be) as a ball's reaction can be determined by pin placement and can be fine tuned by the Mass Bias. Unfortunately, the USBC is stuck in old ways and wont let them do that...

 

[tonx]

Here is some info:

There are only a couple of manufactures left that suggests the CG position actually matters in ball reaction. Storm, Ebonite, C300 and Brunswick all agree that the relevance in todays game is non-existent.

I personally agree with the big guys on this one, speaking from personal experience. Ending static weights also have no effect on ball hook, hit or carry potential.

The USBC proposed 4 possible rule changes, which it submitted to the various companies as well as the bowling public through www.bowl.com

CG placement within 1 inch of grip centre
Eliminating XH
Standardised USBC logo on all balls approved for sanctioned league play
Hardness limit placed on Ball particle loading, monitored by a new measuring technique. (in addition to the current durometer test)

Of those proposed rules, 2 passed, (hardness and logo) as there was massively strong opposition to the CG and XH rules.

The opposition presented was 2 fold. Firstly by the Manufacturers. This was mainly due to the fact that the manufacturing process isn't precise enough with the measurement of the CG to prevent future mismarked cg's.

It would also put more importance on the length of the Pin to CG placement than what is considered today, and the pin lengths that weren't "perfect" for the individuals reaction needs and actual measurements of the bowlers hand. This would cause alot of unneeded wastage, and as such, the cost of producing, (in turn passed on to the consumer) would be increased for no logical reason.

Bowlers rejected the rules because of the sheer cost to have to replace any balls with a cg to grip centre distance of greater than the 1inch proposed would be astranomical, especially because the cg placement didnt actually matter in the first place.

The balance hole definately does change a balls reaction down the lane. It changes the RGmin, max, and average, as well as the RG differential properties of the individual ball. What this enables a driller to do, is to fine tune a balls match up to a certain condition. A good driller is also able to place an XH in a position to alter where the flare's bowtie is on the ball, to simply move the track flare OFF the fingers or thumb of a bowler.

The stand against it was purely the cost factor, and the simple fact that an XH alone doesn't increase the scoring of the actual game, but rather the balls ability to match up better to a certain desired condition for a certain bowler. The reaction change is around 5% depending on the various other variables (surface, pin to pap, pin to midline, psa/mb placement)

What the XH also does, is brings a ball back into legal 'specs', which includes the static weight values. As the static weights have no relevance on the balls reaction, the rules are massively outdated, and need to be removed.

The UBSC is under pressure to retain the scoring rate of todays game, to try and restore the 'integrity' of bowling. Good idea in theory, its a pity they have no idea how to do it.

Credit should go to your driller for giving you updated CURRENT information. Its a pity a few "i've been drilling for 150 years, so I know all" drillers spend so much time bagging people that do keep up, that they fail to keep researching the now...

Personally, I think they should mandate tougher lane conditions more so than try to change rulings that would force bowlers to throw gear away, but these days opinions are like a$$holes, everyone has one.

Furthur information can be found @ www.usbc.com or feel free to pm me, and ill be happy to clarify furthur.

Cheers mate!

 

[jason_doust]

What the XH also does, is brings a ball back into legal 'specs', which includes the static weight values. As the static weights have no relevance on the balls reaction, the rules are massively outdated, and need to be removed.

G'Day Folks,

As always, well thought out response Tonx. Great stuff. I agree with everything you say but this bit quoted above. Static weight tolerances need to remain in place. I'll explain whay I believe this to be so.

If we use the principle of reductio ad absurdum, (to reduce to the absurd - highly appropriate to bowling balls) then if static weight tolerances were removed, then what's to stop a manufacturer placing a 5 lb mass bias in a ball? In essence, like a lawn bowl?

To illustrate: One of Andy Varipapa's most famous trick shots was the "sparing" of the 7-10 by using two balls, one of which had a vast mass in the negative side of it. He would roll it very slowly from the left gutter to the right. It would then hook back to the left gutter, roll out and the mass would take the ball back to the 10 pin. Draw a letter "S" from the bottom to the top and you'll get the idea. While this was happening, he would casually walk back to the ball return, pick up a normal ball and spare the 7 pin as the slow ball hit the 10.

If a rubber ball with a pancake block on a lacquer lane with long oil could be made to do this once free of sideweight rules, what could one of today's auto-hook balls be made to do with the weight on the positive side? Folks have plenty of help from the ball manufacturers already.

Cheers,
Jason

 

[AdrianS]

Ahhhh, a little history lesson there that i can add to. Back in the old old days the 'dodo' ball ruled the roost until its banning some time in the 1910's. How was it made? Make an 18 pd ball, make a 14 pd ball. Then cut them in half, put a 7 lb half back together with a 9lb half(not sure how they did that, the article in the 80th Anniversary issue of the 'BJ' didnt say) And there you have it, 16lb ball, with a 2lb 'mass bias' on one side. As for these banning x hole and limiting exotic drilling propsals these came up in the mid 90's as well. One guy put forward a proposal to limit track flare to 2"!!! How the hell would you enforce that? Have to have a look through my stash of mid 90's bj's when i get home to find more on this one, i believe a few proposals went to the ABC convention that yr(1995) on putting the brakes on bowling balls that all got shot down.

 

[jason_doust]

Aaaahh! Thanks for that, I'd forgotten that story. Hence the name "Dodo Scale" for bowling ball scales. A Dodo scale weighs the outer edge of the ball from the pivot in the scale. A dodo ball would make the scale jump 2lbs when you flipped it over in the scale! There's one in every pro shop today.

Re: Putting two halves of a ball together. If they were rubber balls, the two halves would have been made separately and compressed together around a rubber/cork inner compound, then vulcanised (welded with a heat process - must have stunk - rubber/cork balls were awful to drill!) Really old rubber balls have a seam around their perimeter that shows how this process worked.

I'm not sure if these materials existed in 1910, but here's an historical tidbit in return. One form of vulcanised rubber that was widely used was called... Ebonite! Give you one guess what their original gear was made of...