By skid, I mean the occasional incidence of extreme throw. If the object balls are polished or waxed and become very slippery, do they tend to throw and skid more ?
do polished balls skid more ?
- Thread starter Rarelymisses
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Rarelymisses said:
As much as the sky is blue. Add new cloth to the mix and the slip 'n slide fun starts!
From my understanding, the reason why skid occurs is due to a foreign substance at the point of contact. This foreign substance can be chalk, talc, baby-powder or ball-cleaner (or anything, really). Because it tends to happen on new cloth, I would assume there may be some oil/residue in new cloth that causes it.
"Skid" seems to have two connotations around here.
To me, "skid" refers to the inadvertent throw of an OB due to friction between it & the CB.
To others, "skid" refers to the slide of the balls when rebounding off rails of being hit by other balls.
To me, "skid" refers to the inadvertent throw of an OB due to friction between it & the CB.
To others, "skid" refers to the slide of the balls when rebounding off rails of being hit by other balls.
mosconiac said:
i usually hear it in case #1 and to me it's just a real misnomer. 'Cling' would fit so much better IMHO.
and believe it or not, i am such a blacksmith at this, i have never noticed a single incidence of cling/skid on one of my shots.
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In my opinion "Cling" is the increased amount of contact between two balls which results in the object ball "Skidding" or being thrown off course. In other words "Cling" is between balls and "Skid" is between the ball and cloth. Therefore polished balls may have less "cling" and more "skid". Does it equal out---Now that my friends is the real question. Where are the theorists and the practitioners?
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After polishing my pool balls I can feel the difference as soon as I put them in the rack. You can feel the balls have less friction as you slide the rack into place. The balls seem slide over the cloth before gripping. It is the same as any surface that has been waxed.
Nostroke said:
Same here.
Tennesseejoe said:
You really summarized it well, and something tells me that you are a scary good pool player.
I was curious about that too...I've heard dirty balls are stickier, and can be responsible for inconsistencies in squirt or contact induced throw. I've talked to a few players who have said to always keep the balls clean for better accuracy. As far as cloth is concerned, balls will slide a little further before rolling if the cloth is new. In my experience, new Championship cloth is a bit more slippery than the rest, but once broken in it does play pretty damned good.
I did an experiment to investigate the relationship between new cloth and the frequency of skids. It seemed to me that a slippery cloth would allow more throw and more skids. To prove this, I put a piece of 2' x 3' plate glass on my table in the area of the spot. I froze 2 balls on the glass with oil at the bottom of the balls, so that there was almost no friction between the glass and the balls. I shot into the balls at a 30 degree angle and measured how far the balls threw at a distance of seven feet, and that distance was 8 inches. Then I removed the glass and repeated the experiment on dry cloth. The balls only threw about an inch (the balls were clean in both cases). So the friction of the dry cloth was enough to minimize the throw, and a new slippery cloth should allow more throw (and skids).
This is an interesting result, but I simply do not believe it. While you claim that the balls were clean in both cases, I'm suspicious that there was oil between the balls in the second test. It would have been better to do the experiment in the other order. Further, I never see throw as small as 1 inch in seven feet as you reported in your second part unless the balls have been doctored to reduce friction.Rarelymisses said: