Here I will try to explain the maintenance a bowling ball needs and the difference between cleaning and resurfacing a bowling ball.
First step keeping your bowling ball clean: If you take a close look at your ball after every shot there is a series of oil rings around it, these are called your 'track line'. It would be best to clean the ball after every shot but that would not be practical, you'd be slowing play down', so it is best to have your pre-shot routine include wiping the ball down before every shot. After every 3 games you should use a good ball cleaner, either some Isopropyl Alcohol or a cleaner bought from the pro shop, to remove the lane grime, belt marks and oil that remains on the ball.
With more expensive reactive or particle balls you need to take even more steps to keeping their performance at a high level. These balls are made to absorb oil even though oil is what slows down their performace and so they begin to lose that hard hitting power as soon as you start to use them. There is a way for you to keep them hooking hard and delivering the strikes that you had hoped for when you spent that couple hundred dollars. Remember if they did not absorb oil you would be just as well off using a hard plastic ball or a house ball. Soaking your ball in very hot water, not boiling, is a good way to remove the oil that it has soaked up, Also taking your ball to the pro shop and having it cleaned and resurfaced is a good way to restore the like new condition, but that gets us to resurfacing which is our next topic.
Resurfacing a ball is putting the coverstock back to the condition of new or/and adjusting the coverstock to make the ball react differently. During this process the track line is removed by sanding with a coarse grit and working up to a finer grit. Depending on the line a bowler wants to take on the lane a ball may be finished at a final grit of 500 or sanded to 4000 and/or have polish applied. The shinier and smoother the ball is the longer it will travel down the lane and the more power it will hold for the backend.
This is a brief explaination of cleaning and resurfacing and stop and see me with any questions you may have. Good Luck and Good Bowling, Jerry