I have several balls with different types of coverstock. About 5 years ago I bought my first Particle/Reactive Resin bowling ball. After about 200 games I noticed my ball lost its hooking action. I have always cleaned my balls after every game. I started out using strictly bowling ball cleaners you would by in your local pro shop. I was then told about using rubbing alcohol and after doing a comparison test I noticed no difference in a ball cleaned with a commercial cleaner and rubbing alcohol so I have from that day on used rubbing alcohol on all of my bowling balls. Nobody will change my opinion on it, no matter how much scientific mumbo jumbo talk they want to dish out. It is much cheaper, has the same result, and is legal to use during competition. Anyway after about 200 games I noticed my ball began to lose its hooking action. My Ebonite Turbo Urethane was out hooking my Predator ball. Out of the box my Turbo couldn't hold a candle to the hook of my Predator. So I became frustrated. I tried cleaning my ball with alcohol, then I tried soaking it in alcohol, tried resurfacing, scuffing the coverstock, and commercial cleaners. No luck. It still was hooking and hitting the pocket like a limp noodle. Then I became really worried. So I began researching and found hundred of articles on what they call dead ball syndrome. This is where the Particle and Reactive resin balls are famous for loosing there hooking ability after hundred of oil soaking games. Well I decided I would give up and buy another ball. Well during my research I found an article discussing the pro's and con's about baking your bowliing ball to bring out the oil. Well I figured I was going to buy a new ball anyway so I said what the hell. I found specific instruction on how to do this. I set my oven on 200 degrees and would bake the ball for 2 minute intervals. Each time I would remove the ball from the oven clean off the oil that was coming out of the coverstock and there was plenty of it. It took me almost 3 hours before the oil stopped coming out of the coverstock. Keep in mind I did allow the ball some cool down time after about every 3rd time I would remove the ball. This was to keep the ball from becoming too hot in the oven and causing the coverstock to crack. So the following day I took my ball to my league and man it was hooking like new. It was shredding the rack. Well after all of that hard work I was terrified it would soak up a lot of oil so I would clean the ball after every frame. I then decided that night to try the oven one time to see how much oil actually made it into the coverstock. Well after baking it twice and pulling globs of oil out I decided that it had soaked up the oil faster than I could clean it off so I decided that to see if there was a better way to clean the ball. I decide I didn't feel like spending another hour baking the ball. So I once again began researching cleaning methods. This is where I cam across the hot water method. So I bought a 5 gallon bucket, poured in a couple of table spoons of dishwashing liquid and let it soak for a couple of hours. The idea behind this idea is that the hot water will heat up the coverstock enough to draw the oil out without heating up the ball so much that you run the danger of cracking the coverstock. The detergent helps to pull the oil off of the surface of the ball to where it will float on the top of the water. Well after a couple of hours I pulled the ball out, placed it on a towel and dried it off. I then cleaned it an extra time with some rubbing alcohol. The following week the ball was still hooking like it did new. A couple of months and about 60 games later I noticed the ball started losing its reaction again so I once again pulled out the bucket, water, and soap. The next week the ball was once again acting like it had been reborn. I have used this cleaning method ever since. I am currently still using my predator with 800+ games and still hooking like new, and Ebonite Savage with 200+ games, and an Ebonite Big One. All are still hooking like the first day out of the box. 3 years later I have yet to have a ball crack, chip, or receive any damage whatsoever from this cleaning method. I recommend it to anyone. I still do this every few months and I recommend it to anyone. So before you throw out you old ball I suggest you give the water and bucket method a try. I felt I needed to add this after the comment I received. I do NOT recommend putting you ball in the dishwasher. The dishwasher will heat the water up much more then the water does coming out of the tap. Plus once you remove the ball from the dishwasher it will cool off quicker leading to the possibllity of it cooling too fast and cracking the ball. The water and bucket method allows the ball to cool with the water. And by the time you remove the ball it will have slowly cooled out of the danger zone. Once more, I DO NOT recommend putting a ball in the dishwasher.