Rifling barrel for first strikes?

[coyote]

To answer the OP.

My anecdotal experience is rifled barrels make a small positive impact at 100 plus feet. I used a hammerhead kit on a Hammer 7 with a non magnifying red dot type optic.

I have used other platforms for a few shots (FN303, CCM SR, custom Automags). I don't have enough trigger time to offer an A vs B comparison. None felt practical for my style of play. For performance I would chose Bill's SR, but I don't like the size for playing paintball.

[Trbo323]

Why has nobody done a legit bench test yet? markdem is in a really good spot to do one if he can remain unbias.

Clamp marker down. Shoot 50 or so FSR, possibly even using part of that nice shop there as part of the range just to decrease the amount of wind drift. As long as all 50 hit a target, say a large piece of plywood, at range, don't move the marker, take the barrel off and rifle it. Flip plywood over and repeat.

If the rifling has an effect it should be measurable in a decreased area that all the shots land on the board

How many people spewed that smart parts' low pressure is more accurate rhetoric was true? Testing is possible.

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[markdem]

As much as i like that idea, i have too little time. The wife already bitches at me for playing with guns too much.

Also, i believe each gun performs differently with different paint/barrels/pressures etc. Tests should be performed with the intended gun

[coyote]

You're discounting the variance in size and weight between FSRs. They are inconsistent from round to round just like paintballs.

Many players assume that there is some sort of match grade quality to first strikes. I suggest that is flawed thinking.

I know a handful of FSR players the mic and weigh their rounds to improve the quality of their shooting.

I think if you're going to test the affect of a rifled barrel you need to match the rounds to the bore.

[uv_halo]

What do you mean by this? Check this thread: https://www.mcarterbrown.com/forum/p...barrel-testing. That was done in 2013, and I cross posted it to this forum at the same time.

[KMDPB]

To answer the OP.

My anecdotal experience is rifled barrels make a small positive impact at 100 plus feet. I used a hammerhead kit on a Hammer 7 with a non magnifying red dot type optic.

I have used other platforms for a few shots (FN303, CCM SR, custom Automags). I don't have enough trigger time to offer an A vs B comparison. None felt practical for my style of play. For performance I would chose Bill's SR, but I don't like the size for playing paintball.

Thanks! Do you think barrel length has an impact? Longer equals more time to spin stabilize before being impacted by gravity, wind, ext...?

[coyote]

I never used different lengths. My default preference for paintball is 14 inches. That was what I used on my Hammer 7.

[Seajay]

Thanks! Do you think barrel length has an impact? Longer equals more time to spin stabilize before being impacted by gravity, wind, ext...?

Length only impacts consistency. My 9" nemesis shoots better on my Phenom than my 16" hammerhead, which shoots better on my Spyder.
Low pressure higher volume, versus higher pressure lower volume.
Is the bore matched all the way through or only the first couple of lengths of the barrel?

My personal finding is that ~275 fps gave me the most consistent shots, because my FPS consistency was +- 3 on my markers at that setting.

Just like paintballs you need the volume to push a longer barrel. If the rifling is like a Lapco which is fairly tight you only need 6" of barrel to rotate the FSR a whole rotation.
The rifling on my hammerhead rotates the FSR less than a full rotation on a 16" barrel, I'm pretty sure anyways, but it is enough.

[latches109]

I vote you should rifle it because that would be fun, and unless they are hooking out of our barrel won't make a measurable different in your game. I play with FS players on the field and seem to shoot them out just fine with roundball. It does not seem like an advantage because I have never been hit with a FS round. I have been hit by plenty of sim rounds, those hurt.

[rawbutter]

If you want some hands-on experience, I've got a First Strike Scout you can borrow. I have both the stock barrel and a Hammerhead rifled barrel to go with it, so you can do some testing on your own. I did bring the Scout to the Stafford field last time we played there. I don't remember if you were there or not.

This is video that convinced me to buy a rifled barrel. As others have pointed out, there isn't a HUGE difference between stock and rifled, but the pattern of the rifled shots has less side-to-side variance. That seemed important to me. If you're shooting at a person, well, people are generally taller than they are wide. So a tighter horizontal grouping seemed important to me. Actual gameplay is different, however. Usually people are hiding behind cover with only their mask and gun exposed, so perhaps the tighter horizontal grouping is pointless, especially on a small field like ours that has so many low branches that long distance shots are practically impossible.

Anyway, send me a Facebook message if you want to borrow the Scout. I'm probably not going to use it again until we start playing again in October, so you would have plenty of time to mess around with it.

[KMDPB]

Messaged you

[uv_halo]

While I think that video works okay for promoting rifled barrels, I was disappointed that they didn't bench lock the gun since we don't know his ability to hold the same position from shot to shot.

[uv_halo]

I find it funny that several folks point out that they don't think Rifled barrels are that much better than smoothbores. Just look at the data. The worst rifled barrel (the Tiberius barrel) had a spread that was nearly half of the best smoothbore barrel (LAPCO) at 75 ft (4.8" vs 8.45" respectively).

Sure, First Strike rounds by themselves are a huge jump over regular paint. Maybe it's a matter of diminishing returns in the real world (i.e. where we often have to deal with breezes that we can't even feel) but, I'd rather start with a single digit spread, than a double digit spread.

[Trbo323]

I find it funny that several folks point out that they don't think Rifled barrels are that much better than smoothbores. Just look at the data. The worst rifled barrel (the Tiberius barrel) had a spread that was nearly half of the best smoothbore barrel (LAPCO) at 75 ft (4.8" vs 8.45" respectively).

1)What data?

And 2) most "tests" are done by the manufacturer, they are far from unbiased. Essentially the best case scenario is that they did do the test..... Many times, and just cherry picked the best one.

Hell, hammerhead used to have a video on their own home page that claimed it actually spun the paint as in spiraling (round ball) then about 30 seconds later, in the same video claimed it was also putting back spin on the ball.

They even had slow motion video of paint coming out of the barrel. But because they didn't put any marking on the paint beyond the seam that was already there you could basically claim it was spinning in just about any direction you wanted

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[Chuck E Ducky]

I see a bit of a tighter group at longer ranges. (But not much)

I think my single shot uses a Lapco barrel. But I have shot them with great results out of my smooth bore pistol to.

[uv_halo]

1)What data?

I linked it all earlier in this thread. Maybe you missed it so, I will summarize:

In 2013, using barrels and first strikes I provided, Gordon and Bryce of Punkworks tested First Strikes out of six different barrels from the same, bench locked Tiberius Arms T9.1, at an indoor paint facility in their area. The test results were posted to TechPB first and, I immediately cross posted it here. The barrels:

• Stock (Tiberius) 9"
• 9" LAPCO .690 Smoothbore
• 9" LAPCO/Tiberius .683 Rifled
• 16" LAPCO .690 Smoothbore
• 16" LAPCO/Tiberius .683 Rifled
• 14" Hammerhead .688 Rifled

Here's a link to the data, a google spreadsheet.
Here's video footage of the impacts:

Additionally, I sent a LAPCO barrel to Simon Stevens (of Inception Designs) for High Speed Video capture of the rounds exiting the LAPCO/Tiberius Rifled barrel. Here's that video:

Believe me, I am just as skeptical of the advertising claims of paintball companies. That's why I put my money where my mouth is, and had these things tested.

[Trbo323]

I have questions. To be clear I'm not debating the results, it's a decent test, I probably would have liked to see it have more shots at a larger range but not faulting you for that, work with what you got.

1) why is there a different number of shots for each barrel in the accuracy test? The YouTube one that is

2) why so few shots? I've seen players go through more FS than 30 just trying to hit an opposing player (granted, I think that was not the best decision on their part but whatever)

3) In the slow mo video, I think I see the mark on the round but I'm really confused why this wasn't done with a better background or better camera. (If money is the reason for the camera I would understand that part but the background?) It's really difficult to see at best. The round is only there for about 5 frames. But where's the control for this test? Did you do one?

The Google sheet looks pretty good, whats the CI number? And if you still have access to it, I really can't see whatever number you have in yellow. Not sure if that's a setting on my end but white font on a yellow background just doesn't work for being able to see it.

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[uv_halo]

They (Bryce and Gordon) didn't capture footage of all of the shots. Between reloading the 8rd mags, cleaning a few breaks they experienced, logging the data, and setting up / tearing down the rig and target, and the fact that I didn't specifically ask them for footage (I trusted them), and probably a reason or two known to them (that I can't remember), they didn't collect video footage of the test rig or even all of the shots. Personally, I've never had a problem with this test because I was familiar with all of their previous testing and I was talking to them quite extensively before and after this test.

20 shots is a fine sample size for this type of statistical analysis, Sure, more shots would be better, with diminishing value as the number of shots increases. This is balanced against the cost of the rounds. At the time of the test, the largest packaged quantity of FSR at this time was the 100rd box, which worked out to $.60 a shot, and practically speaking, there were only 8rd mags commercially available at this point.

In regards to the Yellow, it's your browser settings. The Yellow represents Vector. That and CI require a bit more explanation to understand, more on those below. .

The slow mo video was produced with Simon's, personal or business HSV camera at the time. He had to set it up on a full sun day to get that shot. He used the paper to give contrast to the ruler and the round, and as it was outside, the background wasn't black, it just didn't provide enough light. This wasn't a full-on, intended to be documented and published test. It was to satisfy Simon's and my own curiosity as to whether First Strike Rounds exited a rifled barrel spinning. Prior to this test, it wasn't clear if rifled barrels actually spun the rounds, or even just allowed them to spin in the barrels. A lot of folks believed, due to their history with roundball, and Tom Kaye's testing (who is a personal friend, and former colleague of Simons) that rifled barrels were absolute bunk for projectiles like these (even Tom didn't expect them to work). Most of those folks assumed that FS rounds spun up while in flight. This video shows that in the first twelve inches of flight, the FS Round has already rotated approximately 180 degrees. If I recall, that matches (or is very close to) the twist rate of the barrel, and the twist rate of the fins is higher. I've assumed the higher fin rate was due to the fact that since fins aren't 100% efficient in converting drag to rotation, you take a more aggressive angle to get the round to spin at the desired rate.

To be clear, the HSV was actually collected before I had Punkworks conduct their test. I didn't receive permission to disclose the video until after the Punkworks testing.

Simply put, Vector represents the SDEV spread of the projectiles, relative to the center of their group. Looking at one group, you calculate the average of all the shots Y coordinates, and the average of the X coordinates. This tells you the center of the group. You then calculate the SDEV on each of the groups. This tells you how much (68% of them) spread in each the X and Y direction. You treat those as two legs of a right triangle and, calculate the hypotenuse. A circle, centered on the average of X,Y, with a radius of Vector, should enclose the central 68% of shots. 2X vector should cover 95% of the shots.

I'm not a statistics buff but, As I understand it, Confidence Interval (CI) tells you how much the range in which the average Vector, across multiple groups, should appear in, with a certain degree of probability. This is shown in the Upper and Lower fields at the bottom of each group. Somebody with more of a statistics background could probably describe how it is applied here more precisely.

The combination of the HSV and, the data support the theory that rifled barrels pre-spin the projectile thus, improving the accuracy of the projectiles at distances up to 75ft. It goes to follow that a tighter radius at the near end, translates to tighter radius at the far end. In order for that not to be true, some unknown force would have to cause the tighter shots to spread out more, to match or exceed the rate of the looser shots. For comparison, earlier FS and PB testing showed that FS rounds have a relatively linear amount of spread between 100 and 150, while PBs get worse, the further you go.