Axe - Black / Smoke

I can't throw a ball straight at the 10 pin to save my life, it usually either misses left or is in the gutter. The Axe allows me to release the ball exactly the same as my strike balls and just slightly hook into the 10. I typically play on drier conditions and usually midway through game three I'll move right and the Axe becomes my strike ball. My average is moving up fast thanks to this ball.

This ball only goes straight if you polish it every 6 games. The ball either reads the mid lane if you roll it straight or hockey sticks down lane if you get around it to clear the fronts. It’s great if you polish it every time you use it but is not worth the hassle or money if you don’t. Get a plastic ball if you have a rev rate over 400.

I gave this ball 5 stars because it does exactly what it's supposed to do, it goes pretty darn straight for picking up spares. In the past year I have gone through about 4 plastic spare balls. The problem is plastic has a very hard & brittle surface. I throw the ball fairly hard, and I throw it pretty end over end at my corner pins and sometimes it will roll over fingers or my thumb and plastic cracks and breaks. The idea behind the Axe is to use a harder, more durable low friction reactive resin and polish to come up with a more durable spare ball. So far so good and on those rare conditions where everything is hooking off the lane, I can see putting this into play as a strike ball. I like it.

A Hammer that DOESN’T hook?! This is going to be tough to get used to! I’m at my usually lanes writing this review after throwing 2 games. All I throw is Hammer. 3-D Offset Attack, Black Widow Ghost Pearl and a 13 lbs Scorpion that I WAS using as my spare ball. No matter how hard I threw my ball or how forward my rev was I could not take down a 10 pin. They just react way to much. So I had my brand new Hammer Axe drilled out based off the drill pattern for my Black Widow. Released it as I normally do and it went STRAIGHT!!! Yeah, this is going to take some getting used to. However, it does exactly what I wanted it to. It’ll catch a tiny hook if I rev it enough and throw it slow, but barely enough to notice. By my second game I dropped the 10 pin with ease every time it came up. Pretty confident this ball is going to save my average. Big time.

Due to having our lanes get burnt during league, I was looking to find a ball weaker than my Brunswick Twist. The Axe is that. Rolled a few practice games with it. after rolling a 157 game one, made the needed adjustments and shot 257 and 237. Ball rolls real true and easy to find the shot with it. A must for dry lanes, high rev bowlers or slow ball speed bowlers will enjoy this ball.