Oil what's the unit?

[bowl1820]

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'd like to see house's post the pattern diagrams of the shot's they put out for the leagues and tournaments. Now I know these would be meaningless to 99.9% of the bowler's,

But it would be interesting to know, just so that when you went some where else. Say you went to another house and they had the same pattern as your home house. You could really see how the same pattern plays on different lanes.

Boy this makes me remember when I asked the question "Would you like for the house to post the patterns your bowling on?" along while back over in the other forum and I got ragged on for it.

All the answers were "no,no,NO!" or "No most people don't know what that stuff means!" or "you don't know how to play a lane till you throw a ball down it." or " It would do more harm than good" etc.

From all the negative answer's I got, I wondered why there was so much infomation published about patterns and oils etc. If no one uses or thinks about this stuff.

update:
According to Mo Pinel he does it by volume.

< 21 mls of oil = light oil
21 to 25 mls of oil = medium oil
>25 mls = heavy oil

[kev3inp]

I've sort of had this one rolling around in my mind for a bit. I think that for the common bowler it probably would tend to confuse him. I know that when I first started looking into the oil patterns the biggest problem I had was with "units." The units aren't actually a volume, and that's probably the hardest thing to grasp. And of course different oils take different amounts to make a "unit." While knowing what the pattern is or understanding the graphic layout of it is nice, it's true, you really can't know how it's going to play until you roll something on it.

I do take umbrage with the "heavy" oil patterns as to only having to do with length. I've bowled at places where the ball would almost have a rooster tail behind it from the pond they put out, but I've also seen longer patterns with less "volume" that played the same way. Maybe we need more than one designation for oil on a lane. Long and light, or short and heavy, for example.

[Iceman]

I have suggested this at my house and a few of the tournament directors, they just say what ev1 else is already saying, no one would understand it and know what to do with it.

We are not pro's as they see the patterns, but how do we get to be a pro if we can't see the pattern and know how patterns play at different houses, types of lanes, etc.

I would love to know what shot is down, as the units did confuse me some with reading and not understanding, but both posts here show more in lamen terms and I love the long and light and short and heavy approach - that would tend to describe more to non-unit understand people than in terms of how much in decimals.

I know my house is experimenting with spreading the "amount" of oil down across the lanes, as 1 guy told me, would make it carry better. :p Since the switch, I now have the concept of shorter and lighter, which does give more break point snap - but also less on heads, so they tend to break down quicker even on synthetic to me atleast. I can still play outside, but I have to be a little firmer and stand left of center. I really don't care where I have to play, I just hate hearing I can't move left to get the ball to the pocket. I have heard that so much there lately, that I just say "well don't move left or put your shoes on and go home.."

Geesh, people can't grasp the concept of bowling, all you have to do is win by 1 pin, even if it's 160 to 159. Isn't that still a win? Avg doesn't make you win that game. It's called being better than your opponent on that shot and given day. They would rather shoot 250+ to say they shot a Decent 700 and lose their team games then shoot 550 and win all 4 points. Isn't the shot the same for everyone on that pair?

[bowl1820]

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.)

[DaveAyotte]

"bump" works just as good ;)

as to what Kev said... idk 3 years ago, I guess... the charts that they have now are showing mLs. (at least the Kegel one's we're getting for our sport leagues and tournaments.) Not sure if this is new or not.

as to referencing the lane slickness to the length of the patter; I would assume that to be a big faux-pas. I haven't studied patterns or anything, but I would assume you could have a pattern that has a light head, a lighter unit distribution and still be 41-42 feet. - No?

[bowl1820]

as to referencing the lane slickness to the length of the patten; I would assume that to be a big faux-pas. I haven't studied patterns or anything, but I would assume you could have a pattern that has a light head, a lighter unit distribution and still be 41-42 feet. - No?

Yes you could have a pattern 41-42 feet with a low "volume", that would still be a "Long Oil" shot.

It's not a Faux-pas it's just another aspect of how they were looking at and describing lane conditions at that time.

To me what a lot of what the info was saying is, That when looking at lane condition's. You can't really go by volume or terms like Heavy oil, Medium oil or dry. Because whats heavy or dry to you, isn't the same for me.

And that the main thing you should look at are the ratio's (the amount of oil in the center vs the outside) used and then the pattern length and the volume.

This quote still applies "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."

[Tampabaybob]

Whew, took me a while to read your first post, 1820, but got through it and haven't had to take a motrin yet. Most houses I'm aware of, would not be able to tell how many units they're laying down. At best they may be able to tell you the length and where and when they're buffing at. The house I shoot at now runs a 40' pattern, and let night by the 2nd or 3rd frame of the second game we couldn't keep the ball off of the nose or brooklyn. With my go-to ball, by the end of the third game the mid lane area was completely fried and I was "trying" to shoot 2-3 boards right of the last hash mark on the right ! Throwing much harder than my 15.5-15.8 normal speed I was probably closer to 17mph and finished with a beautiful
4-7 -10 split. Sure it was a little hot and humid but the oil (that we had a great shot on the first game) had all but disappeared. Sooooooo, next week I'm bringing a ball I haven't used in 2 years. It's a brunswick DRY-R ball for......you guessed it ....dry lanes ! Will polish it up this week and get the feel of it once again and get it ready for the second game next week.

Bob

PS....by the way....how many hours did it take you to get all of that lane info ?? LOL

[bowl1820]

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.


The hardest thing about that info was finding out what a "Unit" was in the first place. I couldn't find it listed in anything, till I found the CLIP Manual.

[billf]

A little late but I would like to see houses post the pattern. I'm seriously tired of asking and being told one of two things, "It's a house shot" or "I don't know". No kidding, a house shot. What a freaking genius. Now, what is this house's shot? My home house has four possible 'house' shots they can put down. They range from 28' to 44' and 26 to 84 units.