Hammer balls fulfil the expectations of balls that hit exceptionally hard. They’re incredibly satisfying to bowl with.
The weight makes you feel like a superhero, the grip binds your ball to the lane, and when it comes out of the hook and hurtles towards the pin deck, there is no more satisfying sound.
Even if you’re a beginner, you fluff your shot and leave six pins standing, the ones that go down crash out so hard that it’s tempting to grab binoculars and check for debris.
The past few years have seen the release of the Black Widow black/gold, Urethane model, the Black Widow Spare, the Assassin, the Nasty, and the Black Widow Pink. As of August 2020, we have the Black Widow Legend to add to the mix.
In fairness, they have an established line now to which an ultimate-variety ball can be added. But it’s brave adding the sobriquet “Legend” to any line in a product portfolio, particularly when the line itself is relatively youthful.
It makes you wonder how they’ll surpass the performance of the previous excellent Black Widow variations, and how they’ll top this next time they see the opportunity for construction advancements.
So—does the Black Widow Legend live up to the hype of its name? We’re happy to report that we believe it does.
In this article, we’ll set out the specifications for your ease of reference, and then walk you through the details of the construction.
We’ll then talk about the aspects of the ball which win high praise among the experienced bowlers, and balance that account with a super-brief overview of the limitations. These are very few.
BALL REVIEW
Specifications
- Reaction: Strong mid-lane performance: massive back end momentum
- Cover Stock: NBT Reactive Hybrid with 1000 Abralon matte grit finish
- Core: Asymmetrical Gas Mask.
- Differential: 0.058 (Moderate-High flare potential)
- Radius of Gyration: 2.50 (low-moderate)
- Color: Available in both red pearl and black.
Construction
Carbon fiber has been bound into the shell of the Black Widow Legend (BWL). Carbon fiber combines the quality of exceptional lightness with great rigidity.
The elemental formation of tightly bonded chains of carbon atoms make it exceptionally difficult to misshape, thus ideal as the primary element in the composition of the BWL’s shell.
These balls are designed to take a serious pounding—no need to flinch as your Legend whips through the pin deck and crash lands into the retrieval mechanism at the alley’s rear. Even at the heaviest ball weight (16lb), the use of carbon fiber releases a great deal of energy at impact, even at a feather light weight as a component part of the overall design.
The NBT Reactive Hybrid cover stock was a winning ingredient for their First Blood model and has been applied here to exceptional effect.
The precise composition of the additives used to ensure consistent grip on even the more challenging of oil patterns remains something of a trade secret, so we’ll just have to look at the results (in the section coming up shortly).
The overall benefit is to allow the ball to breeze through the lengths of the mid-lane and emerge from the hook with intense momentum at the back end.
If the exterior has been pulled together in the interests of allowing the ball to maximise the kinetic energy generated on the mid-lane, then the interior is all about generating and building on that power.
If you’re familiar with Hammer’s portfolio, then you won’t be surprised to see the return of the gasmask asymmetrical weighted core.
It’s been so named because when you see it in cross-section, the major lightbulb-shaped body of the core has been spread latitudinally close to the base with two opposite pods which look like the breathing vents on a gas mask.
The effect of the design is to spread weight in three directions, which has already proved to be a winning formula for helping the ball to sustain insane levels of momentum on the longer patterns and drive into the backend with the power to pulverize those pins.
The gas mask core also features the all-important carbon fiber, but flex-resin makes an important appearance too. As discussed, carbon fiber can be stiff. To reduce the chances of fracture trauma from repeated heavy landings on the deck, the flex resin has been amalgamated to ensure that the core isn’t too brittle.
Hammer has a lot of evidence from their years of developing and creating high performance balls to know what works in different iterations, and how to combine those elements successfully.
They’re rightfully confident in the durability of the Black Widow Legend, which is why it comes with a 3-year warranty.
The High Praise
As you’ll have surmised, the Black Widow Line has been developed to gain the best of features which contribute to intimidating momentum and aggressive impact at the back end.
It’s the sustained back end power of the Black Widow Legend which distinguishes it amongst the competition. But it has plenty of other qualities going for it, too.
You can get great length on a BWL, even if you rate your own performance as a bowler as middling-average.
They perform to particular advantage on medium patterns, but also make light work of covering the mid-lane of dragon and even shark patterns, which are 45 and 48 feet respectively.
The BWL has fantastic hook power, allowing you to shave the gutter at a heart-stopping rev rate and watch, hand splayed on the board, as the ball roars out of the spin and gives every impression of accelerating to the pin deck at deadly speed.
It’s like owning 12-16lb of consolidated adrenaline, and you can see how fast it’s going, even with the blurred definition of distance and a pearlized/matte finish. It feels almost redundant to point out that the BWL scores well for torque. The Legend laughs in the face of roll-off dangers.
The Legend is also versatile, performing well in high and medium oils without over-reactive flare. It’s a fast ball, but controllable.
It helps you to build a consistently strong performance and, most importantly, helps you learn how to adjust your address, perfect your follow-through, and achieve the optimal balance of ball speed and ball revs.
Even when the oil pattern induces an unusually angular approach, it still feels like a smooth roll.
The Limitations
Part of the work involved in reviewing a product like this is curating the opinions of those who make bowling their life.
We check out the feedback across a huge number of forums, scrutinize the reaction videos for seasoned performance versus performance right out of the box, and take note of vlog assessments to get a notion of consensus about how the ball feels to play with.
This usually takes place with ‘Pros/Cons’ scribbled at the head of a legal pad. Under ‘Cons’, we ended up with a measly pair of bullet points. This is excellent news for Hammer’s R&D and manufacturing teams, but it doesn’t do much for our appearance of journalistic objectivity.
Anyhow, shoving that minor indignity aside, these are the only two consistently mentioned downsides that recurred among the few critiques of the Legend.
This ball is meant to excel in medium-heavy oil conditions. Its internal weighting makes it ideal for fast approach, easy length coverage, and strong diagonal attacks on the pocket.
Some critics have observed that this very targeted design highlights a lesser performance in drier or rougher conditions. Respondents have commented that this can be overcome with diligent surface maintenance of your ball.
This can become costly if you request the replication of your full factory-finish process, but against the extended lifetime of this exceptionally tough and durable ball, this is likely to be worthwhile payoff.
Alternatively, you can invest in the Urethane Widow as the second member as your championship tag team.
The second persistent vein of critique is that although this ball excels in its singular purpose as a strong-hooking powerhouse with an inclination towards fast, angular back ends, it’s not the most versatile ball in terms of finessing your shots.
It’s hard to combine momentum and impact power with agility, which does mean that the process of learning to be more creative with varied finishes requires a great deal more patience and practice than usual.
Playing short patterns is going to require a significant change of technique, for example, and that is going to require the investment of time in different environments until your playing is sufficiently versatile to match the capabilities of the ball.
In this respect, we totally appreciate that some may feel that they’re being owned by the ball rather than the other way around.
Conclusions
The Black Widow is intended as a pride-of-place ball in a bowler’s arsenal, giving you the weapons for devastating finishes across a decent range of playing conditions. It is not, however, intended as the only item in your arsenal.
Use it for long plays or ones where the oil levels might otherwise prove too challenging. Use it where you need to save your stamina, allowing the highly kinetic design to do nearly all the work for you. And take care of it.
If you tend to your Black Widow Legend with the diligence (and levels of fear) that the name evokes, then you’ll double up on stellar performance and exceptional lifetime of the ball. Buck the trend—survive a Black Widow in style.
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