Cleaning Bowling Balls & Bowling Pins: How & When to Do it!

Bowling is a popular leisure activity everyone loves. The excitement and competition involved in bowling with friends and family is a great experience. This experience can be supercharged when you have a well-maintained bowling ball or the leisure centre you play in ensures bowling facilities are fully cleaned and sanitised. Regardless you play with your personal bowling ball or manage a bowling alley, you should maintain and clean facilities regularly, especially bowling balls and bowling pins. But how can you do it?

In this article, we’ll explore how to properly clean and deep clean bowling balls and bowling pins so you can enjoy a smooth bowling game and win for good.

Who Benefits From This Guide?

Whether you’re a bowling enthusiast, a professional bowling player or the owner of a bowling alley, this guide can help you keep bowling balls and pins well-maintained. This guide is especially essential for bowling alley owners as it can help them reduce maintenance costs and replacement costs in the long run.

Guide to Clean Bowling Balls

Cleaning bowling balls has several benefits. A clean and shiny bowling ball is more accurate, rolls smoothly and effectively delivers power and skills to the bowling alley. On top of that, when you, as a bowling alley manager or owner, regularly clean bowling balls, you reduce the cleaning and maintenance frequency and costs of the bowling facilities.

In this part of the article, we explore how and when to clean, deep clean and extract oil off bowling balls as well s when to polish and resurface them. However, keep in mind that the frequency mentioned in this section is suitable for those who use their personal bowling ball, either professional players or enthusiasts. We’ll discuss the right frequency of cleaning bowling balls for large leisure centres and bowling alleys.

Regular Cleaning (After Each Shot or Game)

To undertake regular cleaning, you’ll need two soft microfibre cloths and a mild cleaner spray or rubbing alcohol. You can also use dedicated bowling ball cleaning cloth and sprays to achieve better results, but unless you’re a professional blowing player, these are optional.

First, use one of the cloths to remove loose debris and clean oils off the surface of the bowling ball. Then, spray a small amount of cleaner on the cloth or dampen a cloth with some rubbing alcohol and start wiping the surface of the bowling ball.

You can do this after each shot or after each game depending on how serious of a player you are and how much performance is important for you during a bowling game. Regular cleaning helps the ball maintain its grip and performance and helps you keep it clean and oil-free for longer as it prevents the buildup of oil on the surface of the ball.

Deep Cleaning (After 20 to 30 Games)

Deep cleaning a bowling ball helps you remove any debris and grime built on the surface of the ball over time. It is recommended to have your bowling ball deep cleaned after 20 to 30 games to ensure the bowling ball surface is smooth & grippy and delivers high performance in your next bowling games.

To deep clean a bowling ball, fill up a large bucket with warm water. The bucket should be large enough to house the bowling ball completely. Add a small amount of mild dish soap or specialised bowling ball cleaning liquids and mix for a few seconds.

Next, submerge the ball in the bucket. You can block the finger holes with rubber tape to prevent water from getting in or you can submerge the ball in the bucket and leave the holes above the water.

Let the ball soal for 15 to 20 minutes so the water and soap mixture can break down oil residues and grime. Afterwards, take out the ball and scrub it gently with a clean non-abrasive scrubber or soft microfibre cloth to remove any stubborn stains.

When you’re done, dry the bowling ball completely with a clean towel and leave it to air dry until no moisture is left on the surface and finger holes.

Pulling The Oil Out of The Ball (After 70 to 100 Games)

Pulling the oil out of the ball is the expression bowling players use for extracting oil residues out of the bowling ball. Bowling ball oil extraction prolongs the ball’s lifespan and improves its performance and accuracy during the game. It is recommended to do this after 70 to 100 games.

To extract oil from the bowling ball, fill up a large bucket with hot water (not boiling) and mix a few drops of mild dish soap or specialised bowling ball oil extraction liquids. Then, cover the ball’s finger holes with rubber tape and submerge it fully in the bucket.

Rotate the ball every few minutes to ensure oil residues are removed from the entire surface of the bowling ball. This process may take 30 minutes and you may need to refill the bucket with fresh hot water.

Then, take out the ball and examine it to ensure the surface is no longer oily. If not, dry it with a clean towel and let it air dry for a few hours to remove all moisture.

If the process seems difficult, you can take the ball to specialists who provide bowling ball deep cleaning and oil extraction services.

Polish & Resurface Bowling Balls

After oil extraction, you may notice some deep and permanent scratches on the surface of the ball. You may also notice these scratches anytime. At this stage, we recommend taking the ball to specialists for polishing and resurfacing. This process requires skills and specialised supplies as well as ball spinners.

Bowling Ball Spinner for Resurfacing and Polishing

Experts will apply the polishing compound evenly and start scrubbing the surface to restore the original shine and smoothness to the surface of the bowling ball. Generally, it is recommended to resurface and polish the bowling ball after 40 to 50 games but most professional blowing players do it after every oil extraction session.

How to Clean Bowling Pins?

You may ask why bowling pins require cleaning. Proper maintenance of bowling pins helps the bowling pinsetter machine to work efficiently, last longer and require less maintenance. When bowling pins are clean, pinsetter (or pinspotter) arms can easily grab and reset the pins.

Cleaning bowling pins is easy. For regular cleaning, you can dust and wipe them with a soft microfibre towel. For deeper cleaning, you can mix some mild soap with warm water, dip a microfibre cloth in it and wipe down bowling pins. You can also use rubbing alcohol to clean stubborn stains. Remember to avoid harsh cleaning liquids and avoid scrubbing too hard to prevent damaging the bowling pin finish.

How Often Should Bowling Alleys Clean Balls & Pins?

In this guide, we provided the frequency of regular cleaning, deep cleaning and oil extraction based on the experience of bowling game professionals and enthusiasts. However, these frequencies don’t work for bowling clubs and blowing alleys. They require more frequent cleaning sessions to maintain their bowling facility.

Based on the experience of our clients managing bowling clubs and leisure centres, the best frequency for:

Regular cleaning is twice per week,
Deep cleaning is once per month or once every other month
Oil extraction is when the bowling alley is closed for major maintenance and repairs or once every three months.

Conclusion

One of the best ways to keep the bowling ball surface smooth and grippy and ensure high accuracy and performance during the game is to properly clean and polish the bowling balls. Also, a good way to keep bowling facilities well-maintained and reduce repairs and corresponding costs is to keep both bowling balls and bowling pins clean. In this article, we explored deep into cleaning, deep cleaning and extracting oil from bowling balls as well as how to clean bowling pins properly.

The information provided by this article can help bowling alley managers, bowling game professionals and enthusiasts maintain their bowling balls and bowling pins and ensure high performance and accuracy during the game.

How to Deep Clean Bowling Balls & Bowling Pins?