The food dehydrator works very well for getting oil out of a ball. Previous to that I used the hot water method of sweating out oil in several balls and that worked very well, too; however, I didn't have much success keeping water out of the holes. That's why I went to the hot air method instead.
Like I said before, I seldom use the dehydrator these days.
The three worst balls for soaking up oil for me were:
1 Track 300T, 2 Storm Vivid and 3 Storm Hy-Road.
The traction of the 300T and Vivid diminished drastically, but the Hy-Road was still working quite well although it had a lot of absorbed lane oil.
For several years now I might start up the dehydrator perhaps once a year or so just to check things out. I guess my shammy and ball cleaning methods are working well.
I've learned in the last couple of years that certain balls are best with factory finish and others that I have require changes to either remove the polish or compound finish or to go to a little rougher grit finish to get the reaction working well.
For example, I bought my first Hammer ball (Dark Legend hybrid) which had their Clean n'Sheen finish. I tried several changes to that ball and finally took the Clean n'Sheen off along with sanding it with 2000 grit, 3000 grit and then 4000 grit pads. Next time out it was like a different ball. Before that I was quite disappointed.

I used to do the hot water too, but also got annoyed at the problem with the holes. I tried to buy rubber stoppers used in chemistry applications, but they could never create a perfect seal for the thumb hole and couldn't handle finger inserts at all. Also, since my part of town is on septic I never wanted to dump the used water down the drain and I would instead carry the 5 gallon bucket through the house to dump it outside.

I never got around to the food dehydrator option, I got as far as research.

Mark

Yes, I looked into the rubber stoppers, etc. Research only.
Thought about the inserts getting messed up and loose. Never used that large of a bucket though. It was strange to pick up the ball after 15 or 20 minutes of soaking and find that I had a hard time getting the ball out.
Did my Hy-Road one time for three separate soaks or a total of over an hour and oil was still coming out...
The food dehydrator is the way to go for home use IMHO. It works and works well! Thanks to those who posted info on it a few years ago. The NESCO dehydrators work well and easy to make them do the task for bowling balls. I used some duct tape to seal up some of the holes. Didn't add any temperature gauge. Set it for 120 to 125 degrees F and let it do it's magic.

I have been thinking about doing this myself. I have a teammate that did this and works really well according to him.

Also about home made devices I have a spinner I built from a Northern tool drill press. A total of $59 invested and works really well.

Mark,
About the Hy-Roads. I have the Hy-Road and Hy-Road Nano both at 16lbs both at 500 then Reacta Shine polish.


It would not be fair to suggest either ball because the conditions I bowl on are probably are completely different than yours. I am relegated to playing the outside boards on our league house shot when using the Hy-Roads. To move left I need crisp friction which I do not have. I can go to another center ($&$) shorter pattern high friction and both balls have a completely different and stronger reaction.

I settled on the Hy-Road Nano polished because OOB box it was not really usuable moving left and really did not carry well playing outside. Carry increased with polish with a stronger backend move then the Hy-Road. Both balls are drilled the same.
So you do have the option with the NANO to go to polish but the same with the Hy-Road X since ii is R2X take the polish off.

Thanks BOSStull, I had seen your first post on the thread about the food dehydrator/ball oven but didn't see this one. I just came back from ordering the Nano from my local Pro Shop. This is the first time I'm getting a ball drilled by this pro-shop. He's getting it in on Wednesday, I might not bother getting it drilled until Saturday and trying it out Sunday morning. My home center is more like the 2nd center you mentioned, 22 year old synthetics with tons of friction. To give an idea of what it is like, I'm playing around 12 at the arrows out to around 6-7 with the VDZ on a fresh shot and would end up around 15 at the arrows or a little further in later on in the night. At the end of one night, I was playing 12 to 8 with my Critical Mass and it was just flying back to the pocket.

My final decision to get the Nano came from noticing that I do have some cracking starting to form along the top of the finger holes on the VDZ. I figured I would get the Nano now while I can and when the VDZ is no longer usable I would consider replacing the VDZ with a regular Hy-Road or an X.

Mark

Mark,
Hope the Hy-road Nano works out for you.

Over the last couple of weeks I had 2 balls crack. I had a plugged ball crack all the way around the ball. The other one is a Storm Intense that cracked around the thumb while I was using it. It is still usable but i’m afraid that further use will only crack more but really don’t want drill out and plug. It would be a big plug and for the cost I can’t really justify the repair. I guess I will use will use it is no longer useable.

Thanks, I'm getting it drilled later this afternoon. A quick question, does anyone know what RG does Storm puts in their marketing/info for balls? Is it the high RG, the low RG, or the average/midpoint of the two? I had a heck of a time trying to find the RG of the 16 lb VDZ and also discovered that Brunswick only advertised the low RG in most places until I found a copy of the sales sheet online (Brunswick somehow feels that listing only 4 recently retied balls on their site is useful). I now know both the high and low RG and differential for the VDZ. If I know this about Storm, I should be able to make an accurate RG comparison of the balls before drilling to get an idea of what I would like done. If Storm advertises the midpoint, both balls have nearly identical RG's and the Nano has a slightly higher differential.

OK, I found an old post from another forum that indicates that Storm also publishes the low RG. Could someone verify this?

Mark

Hope the Nano works well for you. I tried to find a definition for you, but didn't want to spend more time. The RG values are the low RG for all manufacturers. I would have expected to find that in writing easily on the USBC website, but nooooo!
I check using Storm's VLS spreadsheet to help determine ball layout. My PSO decides from there.
Have fun...

The RG published is usually the highest radius of gyration for the core. That said, the value published will then fall into 3 categories based on whether the published RG is a 'high', 'medium' or a 'low' RG.

RG's usually fall into a range of 2.46 to 2.80. A ball with a published RG of 2.48 would be considered a low-RG ball. A ball with a published RG of 2.5 or higher, would be considered a high-RG ball.

All 4 of the Hy-Roads have a published RG of 2.57.

Try not to put too much importance on ball specifications. At best, they will only contribute 10% or so to a ball's reaction. 90% will come from the cover-stock and the bowler.