Begun, the barrel wars have...

[DocsMachine]

Further unpopular opinion: Barrel/insert material doesn't matter a bit.

It might have some effect if you're drastically underboring, but even if you 'snug bore', the ball is only going to touch at two places (typically the seam) and of course if you overbore, it may not even do that.

Over the years, virtually every material has been tried for a barrel- aluminum, of course, both unanodized and anodized (as well as Type II and Type III anodizing) brass (plain, chromed, electroless nickeled, industrial hardchromed) carbon fiber (the TM-11 had one from the factory, about a decade and a half before Deadlywind) stainless steel (303, 304 and 316) plain steel (SMGs, Spotmarkers, 007s) plastic (Splatmasters, Talons) and have been coated with just about anything you can think of- wax, Rain-X, Teflon, teflon-impregnated ceramic, ad nauseum.

I've shot just about all of them, often with multiple paints, in multiple conditions and out of multiple guns. And you know what? There's never really been any significant difference.

Personally, I if I have good paint, I tend to prefer a slightly snug fit and the longest control bore I can get. (Well, within limits- that usually means a 14" Longshot or Eigenbarrel.) If the paint isn't all that great, I'll go with a looser bore and/or a shorter control bore.

There have been times where I've had that "magic combination" and practically couldn't miss. There have of course also been times where that exact same combination couldn't hit the proverbial barn broadside.

Basically, as noted above, it boils down to the quality of the paint, and most of today's paint is so crappy everybody's trying different barrels and combinations in an attempt to get it to shoot decently.

Doc.

[Siress]

I only prefer the stainless inserts due to their durability improvement over aluminum or brass. It's amusing that anyone would think they'd perform differently in a paintball gun as compared to any other material of same dimensional specs.

[Cunha]

My best shots have been made with .690 barrels with wedgits.

the most accurate gun I ever shot was a system x NMe stock with stock .693 barrel and .686 balls

the Reddit mod bones Jackson also a member here posted a bit of a rant and deleted it himself.

[Cunha]

Barrel advertisements still inform the next generation even if those of us who have slowly become oldish timers in our own right know better.

Every barrel with a concentric bore without major flaws shoots as well as any other. Just look at the barely polished pipes lurker sells that are praised, as appointed to mirror polished older smart parts or lapco barrels. It doesn’t seem to make a difference as long as the tube is decently straight.

i still choose to believe in gun drilled billet and actually well finished barrels when it comes down to it.

[Hp_lovecraft]

"Begun"? The barrel/bore argument has been around since WARPIG's "Tech Talk"- and for those who never head the pleasure, that's pushing thirty years ago.

Even before TechTalk, I can remember on alt.sport.paintball we were arguing about barrels in 92 or so. This led to someone who owned machine shop (Hamiltons Hobbies) to make up a batch of stainless barrels to sell.... because we all knew that stainless was the "best". That was a whole disaster in itself. This was also back when you could send your barrel to Smart Parts to get ported. Crazy times

[Spider!]

"under" bored is a pretty loose phrase. I usually think of "right" bored as touching on two points, but under bored is touching on about half of its total circumference. That probably comes from one of cockerpunk's works. (?)

Chappy , don't think of hammerheads as spinning the ball. They just tumble the ball on the barrel axis. For those balls that would take a hard right turn into the back of your team mate's head, a hammerhead gives them a spiral that widens as it goes down range. The defects of the ball are rotated on the barrel axis making the spiral path. The growing diameter of the spiral is proportional to the defects. Good paint doesn't fly much differently. Lately, I've brought my set back out. Our favorite pump field stopped renting 68 caliber markers, and we get their old paint dregs which get really wonky. It's still almost impossible to shoot through a hole across a small field, but a little better at mid range.

[Seajay]

The first ones were made by LAPCO for Hammerhead so that explains the quality of the polish....

Oh! I didn't know that part. That does explain a lot! Ha!

[Magmoormaster]

Further unpopular opinion: Barrel/insert material doesn't matter a bit.

It might have some effect if you're drastically underboring, but even if you 'snug bore', the ball is only going to touch at two places (typically the seam) and of course if you overbore, it may not even do that.

Over the years, virtually every material has been tried for a barrel- aluminum, of course, both unanodized and anodized (as well as Type II and Type III anodizing) brass (plain, chromed, electroless nickeled, industrial hardchromed) carbon fiber (the TM-11 had one from the factory, about a decade and a half before Deadlywind) stainless steel (303, 304 and 316) plain steel (SMGs, Spotmarkers, 007s) plastic (Splatmasters, Talons) and have been coated with just about anything you can think of- wax, Rain-X, Teflon, teflon-impregnated ceramic, ad nauseum.

I've shot just about all of them, often with multiple paints, in multiple conditions and out of multiple guns. And you know what? There's never really been any significant difference.

Personally, I if I have good paint, I tend to prefer a slightly snug fit and the longest control bore I can get. (Well, within limits- that usually means a 14" Longshot or Eigenbarrel.) If the paint isn't all that great, I'll go with a looser bore and/or a shorter control bore.

There have been times where I've had that "magic combination" and practically couldn't miss. There have of course also been times where that exact same combination couldn't hit the proverbial barn broadside.

Basically, as noted above, it boils down to the quality of the paint, and most of today's paint is so crappy everybody's trying different barrels and combinations in an attempt to get it to shoot decently.

Doc.

I'd argue that material matters for some things, just not for accuracy or consistency. Namely, weight and durability. I use stainless freak inserts because I'm a clutz. The aluminum inserts are too easy to dent. And carbon fiber barrels do make a perceptible change in the balance of a gun.

But yeah, in terms of accuracy, a tube is a tube. Length doesn't matter, bore size only matters for closed bolt guns and very small increases in efficiency. Porting only affects sound signature. Rifling doesn't work outside of FSR. So at the end of the day, pick a barrel you like the look of.

[Euphie]

I would also add that the surface finish really does change how easy it is to shoot through broken paint, I have this cheap almost ribbed aluminum Spyder barrel and it just holds onto all broken paint, even when you think you have shot through it all of the sudden some hidden paint will touch a ball and cause it to spin wildly out of control.

Though, I use stainless steel barrels because I want there to be more weight, as it makes me more accurate due to being more stable, rather than some characteristic of the material itself, some guns are heavy enough without adding barrel weight (like the shoebox shocker) and for those an aluminum freak back works fine so long as I have a tight enough insert to prevent all rollouts

[Seajay]

I just remembered a time old Spyder strategy, at least it was fairly vocal around the old Spyder forums... spray some windex down the barrel +30 to accuracy.
I'm pretty sure before bore size was all the rage it was all about polishing.

[DocsMachine]

I'd argue that material matters for some things, just not for accuracy or consistency.

-Heh. Granted, that. I still, somewhere, have an early LAPCO 12" stainless 'Cocker barrel, from back when the first third was a full 1" diameter. Shot great, back when the paint fit, but holy crap was it heavy.

I mean, I'm no stranger to heavy guns (I've played with VM-68s with two 20-ouncers) and I kind of like my markers to have some beef to 'em, but that was like taping a brick to your muzzle.

Length doesn't matter, bore size only matters for closed bolt guns and very small increases in efficiency.

-Minor correction: Those things do matter, just not a particularly huge amount, and, even that amount varies in conjunction with other factors.

That is, length matters, but not all by itself. A long tight bore might shoot worse than a shorter tight bore. A long loose bore might not shoot as well as a short tight bore. With good, round, consistent paint, the longer, properly-fit bore might shoot better than a short loose bore. Etc. etc. etc.

It really is a combination- the right mix of bore, bore length and paint quality. BUT... even then, with all those factors perfect, your accuracy might not really be all that much better than a cheap stock barrel. (I remember playing with a 'Mag one day, and literally the most accurate barrel I tried was a stock 8" MiniMag tube.)

Doc.

[Trbo323]

It's almost like Tom Kaye did all this back in the 90s but nobody paid attention, weird

Bore Sizing Tech Tip #2


By popular request I will divulge the inner secrets of bore/paint match ( is was 101 degrees out in the field today so I came in early)

Does having a good paint barrel match improve your accuracy??? YES. How does it do it? Very simple, if your gun shoots with a consistent velocity the paintballs will tend to follow the same arc, thereby improving accuracy. It technically is making your gun more consistent which is a better term than accuracy.

Historically there were many theories about paintball barrel matches. First there was the Tippman theory where they used a very large bore barrel and claimed that the air escaped evenly around the ball and it floated down the barrel without touching anything. They claimed this was the "air bearing effect". Next there was the tight barrel theory that said if the ball seals all the way around the shot will be more accurate. Actual testing has proven both these theories false.

Why match paint to barrel? Going back in time the paintballs were much more inconsistent than they are now, in fact now they are really, REALLY round and half the price. Players found that their consistency/accuracy improved when they used certain size barrels. Unfortunately paint is constantly changing size and this requires different barrel id's to work well.

The technique used to research paint/barrel match is simple and doable by anyone. Testing is performed by blowing a thin powder down the barrel to coat the inside. We used to use Desenex Foot Powder that sprayed on dry. Todays Desenex is a different formulation and doesn't make a powder. Once you have coated the barrel you dry fire the gun once to clear out any extra powder. Lastly shoot one paintball out the gun and inspect the inside of the barrel. The powder will be stripped away everywhere the ball touched. This allows you to see exactly what happened to the ball down the barrel.

If the barrel is too big, the ball ricochets back and forth down the tube. We used to say it looked like Zebra stripes in there. Hence big barrels do NOT create an "air bearing". Barrels that are too small scrape most of the powder off and this creates excessive FRICTION. Tighter barrels that were too long were found to slow the balls down due to this friction. In other words, when you cut these barrels down, velocity went up. Remember the 8-10" acceleration distance, these barrels were 14" long and unported.

The best paint barrel match left two 1/8" wide streaks opposite each other down the barrel. The widest part of a paintball is usually the seam which is also called the equator. With a proper size match only the balls equator touches the barrel snugly on two points. The equator tends not to align itself so the entire seam touches the barrel hence you only get two points touching. So what is happening here that makes this so desirable? We all know paintballs vary in size, this means that there will be slightly more or less friction on the ball depending on how tightly it fits in the barrel. If you use too tight a bore that touches the ball all around, trying to squeeze a bigger ball in greatly increases the friction and changes your velocity. By having the barrel sized to only touch two points, bigger or smaller balls only increase the contact patch a small amount and this gives you better shot to shot CONSISTENCY. To large a bore solves the friction problem but you get back to the ricochet effect.

So this is the story behind proper paint/barrel match. Many of you have commented that the stock barrels seem to work about as good as custom barrels. This is because todays paint is so much more consistent than 10 years ago that the difference between barrels is much diminished. Even the biggest to the smallest barrels don't product that much difference in accuracy IF YOU ONLY COUNT THE SHOTS AT THE SAME VELOCITY. So there you have it, I should mention these studies were done in the early to mid nineties, we have not done any testing lately on two piece barrels etc.

AGD

[rathbaster]

I remember this post by Tom Kaye

[Siress]

By memory, I think that the seam has been the smallest OD on most paintballs produced today.

[Seajay]

That whole write up by Tom Kaye basically just says what everyone has been saying... barrel kinda matters, but paint quality determines "accuracy". All of that write up basically said if your paint is inconsistent then it won't matter. If the paint is consistent you can achieve better consistency with managing bore size.

I know someone will argue that underboring with bad paint will get better results, or overboring will do the same. I guess that is because you are compromising how much the ball is touching the barrel, a lot, or a little, to compensate for inconsistent ball shape and size. So it's less consistent but more consistent based on bad consistency.