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Country:International
This is a general discussion forum about petanque. All issues may be discussed here.
Posted by: F. William Baker (
) at 2007-09-24 19:17:42
Posting has been displayed 643 times
Dear All,
On certain other French Pétanque sites I see where the subject of "Équilibrage" comes up a lot and some commenters will disparrage a certain boule or brand of boules regarding the "équilibrage". I understand the French word to translate into English as the balance or the equilibrium. The English dictionary defines it as such: As related to Physics: "The state of a body or physical system at rest or in unaccelerated motion in which the resultant of all forces acting on it is zero and the sum of all torques about any axis is zero." Pretty fancy language but actually straight forward. I assume that the fabricants have some way of testing the "équilibrage" of their top range of competition boules either by spinning on a flat surface or testing in water........I don't know but I assume again that also a certain number of these top of the line boules are rejected and either re-melted or re-forged if they fail the "test". To me a boule can never be in "true" balance since they are composed of 2 half spheres that are welded together. The bead of the weld would be the critical part assuming that the 2 halfs were equal. On some brands of boules that I own (Non-Inox) if they get wet the weld will rust first and you can see the stripe around the middle of the boule. If you examine all three boules in this condition the weight and serial number and brand marks don't necessarially line up the same from boule to boule relative to the weld. Does this mean that the fabricants do some kind of testing for balance before engraving or stamping the required stuff on the ball? My question is each individual boule in the set examined as to balance before the required markings are applied? Also, If you get your initials or name engraved on the boule wouldn't this throw off the balance ever so slightly? I know that I'm talking about a few grams here and there or less. By the way, most shooters say that they can notice a 10 gram difference in boules. A regular empty letter envelope weighs 5 grams and 2 weighs 10 and I wonder if you can really notice the weight of two empty envelopes when you are talking about an object that weighs on average in the 700 gram range. But I digress. If anyone knows the testing procedure of the fabricants I would be interested. Again taking OBUT as an example they make a zillion "leisure" boules per year which have no weight stated and I sure that of these the "équilibrage" is horrible; but the ATX which at today's Euro /US Dollar exchange is well over $325 US per set is supposed to have perfect balance as compared to other brands or other boules in the OBUT line. For that much money, it better have perfect balance. Again, I know that this is all spliting hairs so I wonder how some people can say a boule has bad balance by just throwing the boule. I sure that manufacturing tolerences for "competition" or "match" grade boules of all the makers are very high or they wouldn't stay in business very long. To me a boule would really have to be out of balance to be noticed by the feeling in the hand. No piste is perfect or is a players motion so when I see talk about a boule having "mal équilibrage" because it varied an inch or two on its path to the jack I really wonder what all the fuss is about. Sorry for the long diatribe. Let me know if anyone knows any answers. Thanks in advance. F. William Baker Dallas, Texas USA
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The Balance of Boules F. William Baker 2007-09-24 19:17:42
The Balance of Boules Don Nairn 2007-09-24 21:37:17
The Balance of Boules Jeffrey Widen 2007-09-24 21:52:49
The Balance of Boules Guy Therrien 2007-09-24 22:41:58
The Balance of Boules F. William Baker 2007-09-25 13:39:54
The Balance of Boules Ray Ager 2007-09-25 14:34:06
The Balance of Boules Jeff Widen 2007-09-25 16:23:37
The Balance of Boules Tony Andersson 2007-10-03 12:37:50
The Balance of Boules Jeff Widen 2007-10-03 15:12:01
The Balance of Boules F. William Baker 2007-10-06 15:42:33
The Balance of Boules F. William Baker 2007-10-11 13:36:44
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