Hammer Raw Hammer Black Bowling Ball Review

The Raw Hammer bowling balls are at a new price point for the current Hammer line, replacing the previously discontinued Vibe series. They feature a new symmetrical core design, which has a higher RG and a lower differential than both the Vibes and the original Raw Hammers from the mid-2000s, all wrapped in variations of the Juiced coverstock. The Raw Hammer Black uses the Juiced Solid coverstock formulation, which was used previously most notably on the Black Widow Red Legend Solid. It comes out of the box dull, with a factory surface prep of 500/1500/3000 SiaAir. Even though it has the most traction out of all the new Raw Hammers, its relatively weak core design helped it match up best to our medium oil house shot pattern.

(Editor’s note: Our three Raw Hammer test balls arrived as one Raw Hammer Black, one Raw Hammer Orange/Black, and one Raw Hammer Blue/Silver/White. We chose to drill all three Raw Hammers for our Tweener tester and review them separately so that we could establish consistent performance ratings for each ball and comment on the differences in reaction among them. We apologize for the inconvenience, and we’ll return to our normal three-tester (Stroker, Tweener, and Cranker) format starting with next week’s reviews.)

Starting on the medium oil pattern, Tweener had more total hook from the solid-covered Raw Hammer Black than from the hybrid and pearlized Raw Hammers. Hooking about three boards more than