i was under the unfortunate impression that using the oven to extract oil from bowling balls was a good idea.Dont try it!!!. I had 2 crack this weekend and I believe that is what caused my battle to crack also. My no mercy split on the way to bowling sunday and today i noticed that my overtime has split over the total circumference of the ball.I just tossed it in the garbage. My no mercy and battle i am going to keep using till they split.I only had the oven on 150 maybe i let the balls get to warm ,but i wont again recommend the oven.hot water bath is as hot as they will ever get again.Quick way to spend 600 bucks,and a costly lesson to learn. boy have i had some rotten luck this year.
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my style, the art of bowling without bowling

You might want to get a good thermometer and check out how accurate the thermostat is in your oven.  You could have easily been using 175 degrees and not known it.  People who home brew know not to trust the thermostat in a refrigerator if they're brewing lagers.  There's always risk in anything you do, but finding a way to get oil out of the ball can greatly enhance it's usefulness.  If it's dead and hardly hooking, it's worth a chance.  I prefer the water methods over dry heat from an oven.  I just tried the dishwasher method and it made a big improvement on a ball over soaking it in a bucket of hot water.  I wouldn't just arbitrarily de-oil a ball every 50-75 games, but that's basically what Brunswick recommends.  I'm not sure how much I trust Ebonite's opinions.  First they said all heat was bad so they developed the Hook Again system.  More recently, there was a post from one of their reps that said heating was effective.
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Ron Clifton's Bowling Tip Archive