Like the wheel, it might seem like theres no re-inventing a ball, but the minds at Storm Products, Inc. have been doing it for decades.

Theres more to high-performance bowling balls than meets the eye. Theyre designed for all kinds of skill, style and conditions. Tavio Sawyer, Storms creative director, compares them to golf clubs.

Like golf clubs, (serious) bowlers have more than one ball they carry, he said.The lane is like a fairway or the green it changes.

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To understand the nuances of ball technology and how theyre built to perform in different ways, it helps to peek inside.

Core

At the heart of the ball is its weight block, which varies in size and shape. Some look like lightbulbs, some look like fishing reels, some look like spinning tops. Others are completely symmetrical and round.

The weight blocks drive how the ball performs how and when it curves or hooks, how fast it revs and where it rotates on the balls axis.

Thats the idea of the shapes, said Chad McLean, Storms technical staff manager.Then all these nooks, crannies and different things make the ball do something different.

Bowlers select different cores to match their throwing style and for spare balls when they need to throw at different angles.

The weight block is the balls core. Some are wrapped in a white cover material, some blocks are wrapped directly in the cover stock.

Cover stock

The cover stock is the part of the ball you see. In the early days, balls were made of wood. By the early 1900s, they were made of rubber. Now theyre mostly made of resins and urethane, although free house balls provided at bowling centers are made of plastic.

Cover stock comes in a variety of colors and finishes. Storm infuses theirs with different scents, like birthday cake, strawberry lemonade and caramel pecan.

A bowler picks cover stock colors and smell to meet her taste, but finishes have a more specific purpose. They have a microscopic tread meant to handle different oil conditions on the bowling lane.

Sawyer compares the core to a cars engine and the cover stock to tires.

The engine makes it move, but the tires help cut through the oil, he said. If you have no polish, its going to absorb more oil if oil on the lane gets really heavy, instead of throwing this thing thats going to hydroplane, you want something that will cut through the oil ... so that when it gets to the part in which a ball needs to hook, the ball still has enough power to do that.

Oil conditions vary from lane to lane and the amount of traffic a lanes seen. Experienced bowlers know how to read the lanes and select the right ball for oil conditions.

Holes

Pro shops drill custom finger holes to fit a bowlers hand. Those finger holes are placed on different parts of the ball, depending on the bowlers style.

Where you put holes in relationship to core inside makes that ball unique, McLean said. You can have three of the same exact ball, but put the holes in different spots, and youre going to have three different balls.

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Anatomy of a bowling ball: How Storm Products makes balls in Brigham City - Standard-Examiner