What is meant by light oil, medium oil and heavy oil?

[peterfa]

I am bowling in a house that I was told everyone uses light to medium oil balls to control their hooking action. My son recently bought me an LT-48 "Vintage" ball for such a condition. Ball has a very small hook when outside 5 board but straight as an arrow when inside 5. Standing 20, throwing 12 to 5.
Then I used the ball in a tournament for seniors in another house with freshly oiled lanes. All of a sudden I had a monster hooking ball on my hands. I was standing 32, throwing 17 to 5.

HELP Confused. Little hook on light-medium...monster hook on fresh oil? Both 35 foot patterns.

[noeymc]

i would want to see your rev rate and ball speed

but light oil is just what it says light oil doesnt change nothing and 35ft patterns is very short most houses i believe are around 42 if i am not mistaken but the reason its hooking so much on a 35 ft pattern it has 25 ft to hook - like 3 for the pins? but i promise your house shot is not 35 ft and thats the difference tournaments use a different pattern

[Aslan]

There's probably a definition for it somewhere...but I can usually determine if I'm on low, medium, or heavy based on how my ball reacts in the first few frames. If I'm lined up in my normal spot...normal speed, normal revs...and the ball misses right of the headpin...I know it's heavy or medium. It then takes some more games to figure out if it's more "heavy" or "medium".

Heavy oil usually forces me right of center, almost a straight shot...or forces me to reduce speed to the 11-12mph range to get any backend reaction.

[RobLV1]

Thank you for asking this question. There are several factors involved in lane conditions and light, medium or heaviy oil, or oily lanes or dry lanes, just add to the confustion. First, there are two factors involved in lane conditions: the length of the pattern, and the volume of oil used. Whatever the length or the volume, by definition, every typical house shot has dry parts of the lane, and oily parts of the lane. Your job, should you choose to accept it (sorry... borrowing from Mission Impossible), is to figure out WHERE the friction is (dry boards), and where the hold is (oily boards). Once you've figure it out, you can adjust to the lane conditions. If you just go by the generic phrases; light oil, medium oil, and heavy oil, your goose is pretty much cooked!

[bowl1820]

Here's from a old post I made, which should give some more insight.


Over in the Ballreviews.com forum a interesting thread was started. (at least to me) About how many units of oil was considered Heavy, Medium and Light.

Well I remembered reading about this in some of my books and magazine, So I looked it up. So here's some of what I found.

First what is a unit of oil defined as, I found this in a 04/05 Spec. manual. (It's in the "Computerized Lane Inspection Program Manual" you can find it on bowl.com)

"A "unit" of oil is defined by the American Bowling Congress (ABC) and Women's International Bowling Congress (WIBC) as 0.0167 cubic centimeters of oil evenly spread over a 1 sq. ft. surface, which equates to a film of oil about 7 millionths of an inch thick."

Now in In USBowler Magazine Vol.2, No.3 Spring 2007 Page 12 Coach's Corner They have a article "Everything you wanted to know about lane conditions" In it they say,

Example: a piece of typing paper is about 400 units thick.
(.000007*400=.0028" A 16# bond paper is .0032" thick so that's pretty close.)

"A layer of oil 100-plus units would be considered "Heavy oil" and anything less then 50 units probably would be "Light oil".

Now in from other source's Oil, Medium and Dry is looked at in terms of length.

In the book "Revolutions 2" they define it this way,

Oil (long oil) were lanes oiled 35 to 45 feet.
Med. were lanes oiled 25 to 35 feet.
Dry (very short oil) was 18 to 25 feet.

Now in In USBowler Magazine Vol.2, No.3 Spring 2007 Page 12 Coach's Corner They have a article "Everything you wanted to know about lane conditions" In it they show it as,

Long oil as 40 feet or longer
Medium oil as 35' to 45' feet or more
Short oil 35 feet or less

Now in Bowling This Month magazine they rate ball's for Oil, Medium and Dry, the current issue is showing these patterns being used.

Oily is a 44' oil (High Street)
Medium 41' oil (Main Street)
Dry 38' oil (Easy Street)

High Street, Main Street and Easy Street, These are the Kegel Navigation Recreation Series of patterns. you can see them here.
http://www.kegel.net/V3/PatternLibrary.aspx

Now for a comment it's not how much oil on the lane, but where it's at. Pattern's can be adjusted to make short ones appear long and long ones appear short.

Heres a quote from a article called- "Lane Pattern Basics: An Overview of Blend, Taper & Application".
Click here for the article (http://bowlingknowledge.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=164&Itemid=46)

"the overall volume of the shot probably has the least affect, as the length that the conditioner is applied can make the "volume" almost meaningless."

When it comes to Oil and Oil patterns there are many factor's that come into play about lane condition's and how to play them. The amount of oil is one of the smaller factor's involved.



I ran across this in a past issue of BTM (Bowling This Month). It was in a article about sport shots, but I think it applies with this post also.

They had a chart showing 6 patterns made of combination's of these, with ball and drilling recommendation's for them.

Pattern Length
Short (34' or shorter)
Medium (35' to 40')
Long (41' or longer)

Oil Volume
Light to Medium (20ml. or less)
Medium to Heavy (More than 20ml.)


The thing is now, knowing the units is just about meaningless.

Knowing the pattern length, volume and ratio's is more meaningful. With the degree of difficulty being determined by the crosswise blend and the lengthwise taper.