Mickey Higham’s “On the Ball” 10.14.17

This week, Some questions on maintaining bowling equipment, let’s start with the most overlooked your shoes.
The bowling shoe is your contact with the playing surface and essential to good bowling. Look at the bottom of the slide shoe it should be clean and look near new. If your sole is dirty your slide will be inconsistent and your release of the ball varied. The heel also should be clean as this is the brake that ends the slide as you release the ball. If your sole needs cleaning a wire or nylon brush along with a leather cleaner will bring it back. Make sure it has fully dried before bowling. Use that brush between frames to keep it clean.

All bowling ball manufactures have a maintenance schedule for specific balls based on type.
Plastic balls wipe of with oil free, or micro fiber towel after each delivery. Re-polish as needed
Reactive polished, in addition to above, clean with ball cleaner at the end of session, this helps prevent the lane oil from soaking in to the pores of the ball. Re-polish ball at 30 games, re-surface and re-polish at 60 games.

Reactive dull or solid, Re-sand every 15 games, re-surface every
60 games.

The use of chemicals not formulated for bowling balls can be harmful and have an effect on the plasticizers that create the porosity in the cover stock. Do not use alcohol type cleaners.

The finger inserts are another item often overlooked. The manufacture recommends replacing every 60 games or 6 months.

We have a tune-up special in the shop which includes oil-out procedure, resurfacing to factory, and new finger inserts for $25