The small questions you've never asked.

[DavidBoren]

I thought it was just the internal regulator that kept messing up, and something about not cocking upside-down. Anyways, it's my favorite thing in paintball that never was.

And, why would the M808 main battle tank have a pedal for up and down? I'm kidding, Red vs Blue references are part of my everyday life. Lol.

[Magmoormaster]

Why didn't someone fix the Thumper?

Has anyone made a bolt-less marker, yet?

Why weren't vertical poppet valves more popular?

What was the purpose/intent of three tube bodies (Angels, Vikings, etc)?

Why are there six pedals if there are only four directions?

#1 from what I understand, the guns ran fine as long as you run an external reg instead of the stock integrated reg. Might be wrong though

#2 yes, there have been several. Airstar Nova, ICE Epic, Alien Revelation. The Thumper is bolt-less. Probably more that I'm forgetting.

#3 On the Angel, the 3rd tube held the battery as mentioned. The Viking just used the same body as the excal, which needed 3 tubes because it was closed bolt and thus used 2 rams. One ram to cycle the valve, one to cycle the bolt. They used the same body for the viking because it was cheap.

#4 shut up caboose!!

[Siress]

Why didn't someone fix the Thumper?

Has anyone made a bolt-less marker, yet?

Why weren't vertical poppet valves more popular?

What was the purpose/intent of three tube bodies (Angels, Vikings, etc)?

Why are there six pedals if there are only four directions?

1) IDK for sure, but I understood it to be a critical design flaw that couldn't be repaired on the parts made and it's not worth building whole new markers.

3) One tube held the gigantic battery cell, the other held the valve and hammer, and the rear triangle varied a lot but basically held the solenoid. Board went into the frame.

4) You forgot about Up and Down.

[DavidBoren]

Why didn't someone fix the Thumper?

Has anyone made a bolt-less marker, yet?

Why weren't vertical poppet valves more popular?

What was the purpose/intent of three tube bodies (Angels, Vikings, etc)?

Why are there six pedals if there are only four directions?

[Siress]

Impulse threads really are the superior thread. Still compatible with 1" OD bodies, short, easy to machine, quick to remove, impossible to cross-thread, and dual lead - meaning faster to get threaded on. It still baffles me that this isn't the standard today. I wish PE would lead the charge now that they seem to be dominating the marker market. I'll happily retire my AC freak backs.

[DocsMachine]

Wouldn't the Rainmaker have predated all of these?

-Good catch and good point. Let's see, the Rainmaker came out in what, '97? I thought the Bushhamster and Defiant came out closer to '99-2K. I know the first time I saw a Tribal in person was 2000, but that doesn't mean that's when they came out. I do recall hearing from quite a few people, online and off, that they liked the Tribal over things like the Impulse and the Bushy2K due to the fact it took 'Cocker barrels.

Doc.

[Carlito[]

I agree that smart parts threads are superior. You can remove the barrel, clean it and have it reinstalled quicker than simply removing an autococker barrel.

[The Inflicted]

Finally, around 2000 or so, I believe it was the Tribal came out, which was, I think, the first non-WGP marker to take WGP barrels from the factory. And it was a brilliant move by the manufacturer, as that was a significant selling point.About that same time- possibly before, I'm not sure- Bob Long came out with a variant of the Bushmaster 2000 (which still used a legacy ICD thread) that also took 'Cocker threads, and shortly after that released the early Intimidators that also used it.


Doc.

Wouldn't the Rainmaker have predated all of these?

[powpowpaintball]

Now that was a detailed explanation. Great history on barrels

[DocsMachine]

Why can't companies standardize barrel threading?

-Lots of reasons. The main one being that early on, there basically was no market for "aftermarket" barrels. You shot whatever came with the gun, virtually always because the barrel wasn't even removable. (IE, 'unibody' Phantoms, unibody Bushmasters, 007s, PGPs, early LAPCOs, Hurricanes and Typhoons, old Wintecs and Carters, etc. etc.)

The only reason the 'Cocker even had a removable barrel back in the day was that was easier for Bud to make them that way in his home shop- and one of the early selling points for the first-gen Snipers was 'interchangeable calibers. Swap the barrel and bolt and you could have .62 or .50, depending on what your local field had or what you preferred. (At the time, lots of players thought the smaller balls had a better chance of making it through heavy brush.)

But even here, the idea was never to "swap to a better barrel- you had to order the Sniper with a custom-fitted .62 or .50 barrel, because the barrel hood extended past the feed neck and had to be drilled through in place so the holes would line up. That meant the .62 barrel that was fitted to your gun, probably wouldn't fit your buddy's gun.

Why did Bud use the thread he did? I'm guessing a bit, but my working theory is that it's a holdover from rethreading 007's for barrel extensions. The later 007's with the 2-piece barrels (the outer hood/sleeve thing) actually had a 2-piece body. The lower hammer tube/barrel was a piece of tubing the inside diameter of the hammer, with a smaller-bore piece pressed in and spot-welded in place, to form the bore area.

If you bore out the original barrel, to try and add a screw-in extension, you basically have to machine out all of that inner barrel sleeve. The resulting bore- the ID of the main hammer tube- is very close to ideal for an uncommon, but off-the-shelf 15/16"-20 thread.

I'm reasonably certain that Bud discovered that early on, and had been doing screw-in extension conversions for 007s. When it came time to make the Sniper, I'm sure he already had barrel sections in that thread, or was at least familiar with it and had the taps on hand (remember, Bud was making these in a garage, on manual machine tools- it was a LOT easier to tap a part like that than it was to single-point-thread it) so he used it for the new gun.

Again keeping in mind that removing the barrel quickly simply was not a thing, and swapping to a DIFFERENT barrel was basically unheard of.

BUT... as the sport grew and more guns came out, and more actual manufacturers appeared (rather than garage-shop types) several people started coming out with removable barrel variants both because it was easier to manufacture two shorter pieces of tubing than one big long one, and that the players liked being able to remove the barrel, swab it out (pull-throughs having not yet been invented) and put it back on.

THEN, Smart Parts appeared. According to rumor, one of the early All-Americans came up with an idea for a "self squeeging" barrel. He took a stock barrel off of whatever gun he was shooting at the time (probably a Sniper, this was pre-semi-auto by several years) and drilled a series of tightly-spaced holes in a spiral pattern. The idea being that if you broke a ball, the next ball fired would "squeegee" the paint out and blow it out the holes.

Well, that didn't work as planned, of course, but one of the other All-Americans was a patent attorney, and he took that idea- I have no idea if it was with the blessing of the inventor or not- and of course patented it, giving it a horsecrap story about 'disconnecting the ball from the gas column' or 'helping cushion the ball from the air burst' or some other BS.

They then bought up fistfuls of factory barrels from any manufacturer they could, and ran them through whatever machine they had that they used to drill the holes. Thy doubled the price and put 'em on the market, telling people they made the gun quieter, added range and accuracy, imparted a "rifling" spin and probably walked your dog and made your bed every morning.

THAT lit the idea of aftermarket barrels. Hey, maybe instead of this GUN or that GUN being better/more accurate, you can just swap a cheap barrel to get that accuracy you wanted. (Although bore sizing and whatnot was still a long ways off.)

Smarty-Parts started raking in the cash- it was an untapped market, and they had the only real supply. But other manufacturers saw this, and of course immediately started offering their own. And since polishing a bore had already long since been a thing, and SP having tied up spiral porting with a patent, those manufacturers went with "mirror polished" or "straight rifled" or "air rifled" or offered stainless steel, or brass, or hard chroming or whatever.

BUT... almost all the markers still had their own threads. No one worried about interchangeability. Some places, like Tippmann, started out using 7/8" diameter extrusions for their slip-fit SL-68 barrels, which got carried over to the SL-68II which then got carried over to the 68 Special. So they already had tons of that tubing in stock- I'm sure- when they brought out the original Pro-Am. Since "barrel compatibility" simply wasn't a thing back then, they used another uncommon, but still off-the-shelf 7/8" thread.

Some others had to use different variants thanks to the layout of the gun. The original Illustrator had to have a long breech section so the barrel could reach back past the valve chamber to where the feed neck pretty much had to be. Sheridan tried to make the already-oversized VM-68 as compact as possible, and thus gave it a fairly stubby thread. (And, since they already had brass barrel material from years of PGP/PMI/P-68 production, went with a thin brass barrel and that retaining collar thing.)

The first compatible-with-another-brand marker I'm aware of was the Icon-Z, which took Bushamster* pump barrels, which were probably one of the most popular "tournament class" guns of the time, around, I think, '91-ish?

(*That's a typo, but I'm gonna leave it. )

Now, the 'Cocker took off in part because there was already a small aftermarket segment making custom parts for the Sniper- wire stocks, "California Constant Air" kits, bolts, Cooper-T detents, etc. So when the Autococker came out, players tended to gravitate toward it- it also being one of the few decent semiautos out there was of course a big help, too.

And it didn't take long before the 'Cocker and the Automag proved themselves basically THE top tournament guns out there, and because of that, more and more aftermarket shops made more and more custom parts- plus that big slab of blank-canvas aluminum just screamed to have slots and lines and gills and grooves and bits and bobs milled into it, which made it popular to anyone that wanted a truly one-of-a-kind custom gun.

Finally, around 2000 or so, I believe it was the Tribal came out, which was, I think, the first non-WGP marker to take WGP barrels from the factory. And it was a brilliant move by the manufacturer, as that was a significant selling point.About that same time- possibly before, I'm not sure- Bob Long came out with a variant of the Bushmaster 2000 (which still used a legacy ICD thread) that also took 'Cocker threads, and shortly after that released the early Intimidators that also used it.

That pretty much set it in stone. Defiants were popular, and 'Timmies even more so, and since the aftermarket companies were already working overtime to supply the very-popular Autococker, they simply started making even more to supply the other Autococker-threaded markers. And so, after a fairly short time, it basically became a rquirement- if your gun didn't accept a 'Cocker thread, you almost couldn't sell it.

The exceptions, of course, being the companies that were already big and established either before all this was happening, or at least very early on, like Tippmann, WDP and Smart Parts themselves.

Tippmann, as I said, simply stuck with their existing barrel materials, and being an entry level gun, that was considered more than enough. WDP had to go with that early long Angel breech end, to clear parts of the body to get up to where the feed neck was. SP tried to buck the trend by making an improved 'Cocker thread- almost identical to 'cocker, but a double-lead thread so it screws in faster. Which in my opinion was actually a pretty good idea.

But, the market has spoken, and while nobody but SP uses SP threads, basically everybody uses 'Cocker threads. The ones that don't, each have their own reasons: 'Cocker barrels still tend to have "knuckles" of some kind of them, as a holdover from the pneumatics-shroud days (and that gives a place for 2-piece barrels to screw together ) and so that makes them a poor choice for pumps like the Phantom or SL-68 which have a wrap-around grip.

WDP, rather stupidly in my opinion, tried to keep a proprietary thread on their Angels, but ended up with what, four different versions? That was a poor marketing move right there. Tippmann, as I said, doesn't care about the aftermarket, and the vast majority of their guns are never modified, so barrel compatibility is a nonissue. SP is going to keep running their thread as long as they can get away with it, simply because it IS "theirs".

Apart from them, virtually everyone else already uses 'Cocker threads. It's not the best possible thread, but it HAS become the "standard".

Hope that answers your question.

Doc.

[autococker04]

Might want to get himself tested for the 'rones.

[bellicose]

The problem with standardization is that it can stifle innovation. New breech mechanisms may never be developed. AC is not the best thread out there anyway; someone with expertise, please explain why (I'm not a machinist).

[Nish]

And CCI has it's own.

[lew]

I mean, I wish we chose Impulse threads instead (much faster to remove) but it's better than needing a different barrel kit for every gun.

Word. I like Impulse threads, and Shocker threads are pretty quick, too.

[Magmoormaster]

Why can't companies standardize barrel threading?

I get the up-sell value of needing a specific barrel but damn is it annoying 🤦♂️ Luckily everything I own other than my Spyder uses AC barrels, so at least I have that going for me.

I mean, we're getting there. Autococker threads are the dominant thread pattern these days. Very few modern guns use anything else. Spyder, Tippmann, and GoG/DLX are the only companies that make guns in different threads. Everything else uses cocker. I mean, I wish we chose Impulse threads instead (much faster to remove) but it's better than needing a different barrel kit for every gun.