[Tacoma750]

My original barrel was smooth inside. The new one I bought has a spyral desighn on the inside. Does this help with velocity or accuracy?

[txaggie08]

Its rifled, thus the interior spiraling.


Im honestly not shure on the answer to that, but i doughbt it. I cant see rifling being terribly effective on a poorly sealed plastic ball moving as slow as PB's do.

[Torch]

What one is it?

I have a rifled Hammerhead barrel kit. It works as good as any other kit I've used, not better in my opinion. Only difference is that its a complete pain to clean unless you have running water to put it under.

[Mortisdeum]

Originally Posted by Torch

...
I have a rifled Hammerhead barrel kit. ...

Does your ball "wobble" while in flight? (Just wondering)

But back to the post.

Personally an internally Rifled barrel is not as good as non-rifled barrel for a few reason (Rifled porting is different)

• Air can slip around the ball in the riffling grooves. So you would get a lower velocity
• You can't relay spin a paint ball as fast as you could a "reballs".(try spinning a raw egg and a hard boiled egg to see what i mean) So there is no real benefit from the spin unless your using "reballs"
• The Rifling can cause you to have more ball breaks in the barrel and are harder to clean as Torch said

[Trbo323]

rifling in paintball barrels does nothing, it works on actuall guns because the bullets are not a sphere, thus they can keep pointing in one direction while flying through the air. if you get a paintball spinning with a rifled barrel there is no guarentee that it will keep pointing in the same direction, if it moves one way or the other then the spin will throw it off and it will start curving. Kinda like a baseball pitcher, they spin the ball on purpose in order to get it to curve. the only kind of spin you would want in a paintball, is backspin, which can keep the paintball in the air longer and as long as the spin continues it will be very acurate (this is why the tippman flatline systems are acurate and can shoot very far)

[Tacoma750]

well I went out and shot around a little. I tried the stock barrel and the one I bought. The gun is MUCH more accurate with the new barrel. The stock one made the balls curve and miss target. with the new one, I was hitting dead on each time! So i think it was money well spent. Now I need to go out and play a real game

[Torch]

Originally Posted by Mortisdeum

Does your ball "wobble" while in flight? (Just wondering)

Not that I have ever noticed. Sometimes all the balls start to slide all towards one side at really extreme distances though.

Otherwise when its on it works good enough. But you break a ball and its all over. As bad if not worse than a dirty flatline.

I got it to see what the big deal about them was.

[Tacoma750]

I agree...Once you break a ball in it, every ball will get choppe duntil you clean it! And only water works to clean it form what i can tell

[txaggie08]

Originally Posted by Trbo323

rifling in paintball barrels does nothing, it works on actuall guns because the bullets are not a sphere, thus they can keep pointing in one direction while flying through the air.

actualy the fact there spherical has nothing to do with the rifling becoming ineffective. Rifling has been around for a good bit longer than conical shot has been used(especialy in lite art.).


I think the main reason it has no effect is the velocity and the lack of wadding material(or of an effectivley sealed bullet)

[Renegade_Storm]

Originally Posted by txaggie08

actualy the fact there spherical has nothing to do with the rifling becoming ineffective. Rifling has been around for a good bit longer than conical shot has been used(especialy in lite art.).


I think the main reason it has no effect is the velocity and the lack of wadding material(or of an effectivley sealed bullet)

Right, the shere is not always pointing the same direction, so it cannot form into the rifling, the only solution is to use a sabot or paper/clot wad, but that would require muzzle loading, not practical, and the spinning on a fluid filled object just seems like it would throw it off more than it helps, you also said it shot better than the stock barrel? thats because most stock barrels suck.

[txaggie08]

The fluid issue is probably negligable, the force fo the spin would keep the fluid spun to the outside of the shell. The main problem is velocity.


Slugs fired from a shotgun barrel has the same issue. Not enough velocity for the rifling to properly stabalize the round.

[Tacoma750]

yea I said it was better than stock...but I know stock sucks. The gun I got isnt really th ebest by any means. But for my setup and getting started, I got a great deal on it and I'll ahve a lot of fun! Son i'll sell it and upgrade to somethnig else.

[ab3i]

Pardon a newb to the forum for posting such a long winded reply, but this happens to be an area of interest for me.

It isn't so much the velocity of the projectile that dictates the effectiveness of rifling, but at lower velocity a greater rate of rotation is needed. To achieve a fast enough spin to stabilize the ball at lower velocity, you'd just utilize a higher twist rate to impart a greater degree of spin per unit of length traveled (OK it isn't EXACTLY that simple, but it illustrates the point). Quality shotgun slugs fired from a quality rifled barrel can be VERY accurate, and if you look at the specs, the twist rate for a shotgun is greater than say a 30.06.

The #1 problem is contact. In order to work, a projectile must have significant surface area in contact with the rifling itself. In fact, with typical rifle rounds, the bullet is actually gouged slightly by the riflings. Lets face it, paintballs are no precision ammunition. Getting that kind of contact would ensure a large percentage of your shots would break in the barrel.

The idea of spin stabilization is to keep the round from changing directions. Its known as the gyroscopic effect. Get a portable computer hard drive cranked up at full speed, then hold it in your hand and try to tilt it. It will resist the change in orientation. This would theoretically work to keep your ball from 'hooking'.

In reality though, uneven air flow causes inaccuracy. The two situations here are uneven air flow over the ball in the barrel (crappy barrel/crappy paint/crappy air system) and uneven air flow over the ball in flight (crappy paint that isn't perfectly round). Rifling would help with the second problem the most, but having a ball that fit well enough into the barrel to make rifling effective would solve the first problem as well.

The fluid thing is pretty negligible. An egg wont spin because it is VERY poorly balanced. When you spin it, the yolk heads for one end, and the lighter white part heads for the other end. With a uniform fluid in a uniform shell, it would resist the spin somewhat, but would end up spinning along with the ball reasonably well.

I've played a couple times with rifled barrels, and was thoroughly unimpressed. They were real buggers to clean, and I didn't notice any significant improvement between a 16" smooth bore DYE ultralight, and a 16" rifled barrel. Rifling, unfortunately, just isn't going to be very effective for paintball.

So there's your daily dose of physics.

-Dave

[Trbo323]

these are probably the exact reasons that we dont see many rifled barrels on the market

[Torch]

Originally Posted by ab3i

Pardon a newb to the forum for posting such a long winded reply, but this happens to be an area of interest for me.

You going to make more posts like that? We could use them.

[txaggie08]

Nice post. Gunsmith or engineer ?

Quality shotgun slugs fired from a quality rifled barrel can be VERY accurate, and if you look at the specs, the twist rate for a shotgun is greater than say a 30.06.

I guess i should have been more clear in my post, I was speaking more to the average shotgun barrel than a slug specific barrel because it was a quick and easy example. I didn't expect and exper in the field to come along .

Rifling is a pain in the backside period. You think a pb gun is bad you should play with a cap and ball rifle at some point... Although, oddly enough, rifling was originaly invented to keep cannon from fouling.

[ab3i]

I'm an electronics eng. student actually, but I'm also a complete geek when it comes to physics, and I've spent (way more than) my fair share of time at the shooting range.

I've done quite a bit of muzzle loader hunting, but never using miniballs. I've always used various sorts of sabots. It wouldn't surprise me if spin stabilization became a standard paintball thing down the line a few years. They'll have to come up with a cost effective way to make paintballs that can handle it though. Maybe some sort of rotating chamber. I could see it working for pumps, but not for anything that could do more than 1 or 2 shots a second.

I certainly hope I can contribute more to this forum. I used to play frequently in high school, but since I left home in 2003 I've only just recently had the time to get back into it.

I look forward to helping out where I can, and asking plenty of questions of my own

-Dave