[Angered Fists]

A lot of new players come into the game wanting to get the most accurate gun they can find. I too was guilty of this at one point, but I have invested the time to learn more and more about the sport and have drawn the following conclusions from my experiences. I thought I would share them with the new players in an attempt to enlighten them.

There is no such thing as an accurate paintball marker. The best you can hope to find is a consistent one, meaning that if you fire it two times in the exact same direction, (controlling all variables), the balls will land/strike near the same place. It is unreasonable for you to expect them to strike the same place because there are a huge number of variables that will affect the trajectory of the ball, and these can only be controlled within a certain margin of error.

The reason that some markers are more consistent is a combination of two major factors: paint and air.

There have already been a great number of articles written regarding paint to barrel match, so I will only touch on it here. Basically, if you are not shooting the right paint for your barrel, it does not matter how well your marker works, you will not shoot consistently. This also means that if you are shooting dimpled paint you will not shoot consistently. Although balls are not particularly aerodynamic, cubes are even less so, so buy quality paint and avoid this dilemma.

Air is the second thing that has a huge impact on the consistency of your marker. So long as the force exerted on the ball by the air is consistent, the ball should be affected in the same way each time. As long as everything happens the same way within the gun every time, the balls should achieve a similar trajectory when they are fired. This leads to consistency. This is why it is important to have high performance internals, they can be relied upon to function consistently, and will help your marker to perform consistently.

This is also why it is important to have a very good regulator, or system of regulators. The more precisely you can monitor the flow of air within your marker, the more precisely you can predict where each shot will be placed.

What all this breaks down to mean, is that if a marker were accurate, then anybody could pick it up, use the sight rail (why paintball guns even have these I will never know), and hit a target. In truth, it takes time to get used to a marker and know how it shoots. But once you become accustomed to your marker and how it shoots, you actually can pick it up and hit a target, because you can predict where it will shoot because it is consistent. This is why paintball demands more than just a high performance marker. You also have to know how to use it. Happy shooting.

[Alpha]

Accuraccy = paint to barrel match and consistancy.

Only way to improve accuraccy is to remove the amount of space between the paint and the bore of the barrel, increase velocity, shape the paint, and be consistant. And two of those are impossible to do (shape paint and increase velocity)

[theunforgiven]

tl;dr:
match barrels and paint.
use correct velocities and gas.
be consistant.

[Angered Fists]

Hey this just in. This thead is in the new players forum. If you're not a new player then its probably not news to you and its not a question, so there's no need for you to be in here. Unless of course my information is incorrect, in which case please feel free to correct me, but I was trying to give a more detailed explanation for the new players. Back off.

[Alpha]

Angered fish, be quiet. YOu made a very great post, adn we were just adding to it.

[Deadline]

You post the "paint to barrel match" thing as if its a proven law. It is not. It is a theory, one that will never be proven right or wrong. There are plenty of people out there, including people who have played for many years, who would tell you that the whole thing is BS.

Spending hours poring over paint and barrel bore charts, squinting at numbers to the 3rd and 4th decimal point, will not ever make you more consistent or accurate.

If you can put your paint in your barrel, it does not roll out, and you can blow it out without major amounts of force, you are fine. There is no proof that matching your barrel and paint bore exactly will do anything but waste your time and money.

[Alpha]

WEll hree think about this..

You have a large toilet paper roll. You put a paintball in it. Blow through it, and it doesn't go very far.

You take a 3/4" PVC pipe of like 8 or 10 inches, adn blow in it. The paintballs gonna go out pretty well.

The same rule applis to paintball barrels. How is the paintball pushed out of the barrel? The air behind it is at a higher pressure then that of the air in front of the paintball. The high pressure wants to go to the low pressure zone and equal out, but in order to do that, it has to push the paintball. So it does.

IF you put a small space between the paintball an the barrel, the air behind the paintball trying to push it out wont have to push it as much becuase it can just leak out the sides of the paintball.

Same reason you use wadding for spudguns/estes rockets. If you don't put wadding in an estes rocket, the parachute will take longer to open (and it will get a burn on it).

[Angered Fists]

Originally Posted by Alpha

Angered fish, be quiet. YOu made a very great post, adn we were just adding to it.

Was that an attempt at a witty retort? Mispelling my name? How were either of you adding anything? You simply summarized my post.

Deadline. I didn't recommend that people spend hours matching their paint to their barrel, but you can't deny that using an extremely large bore barrel with a small bore paint will result in decreased consistency. The test that you recommend is fine to ensure that you are using the right paint.

[Silent Kill]

paint to barrel does matter. if the barrel was big enough all the air could go past the paint and it might not even roll out. i don't know what you consider accuracy Deadline but i think i could hit a target better if the paintball did more than roll out of the barrel!

[Alpha]

Originally Posted by Angered Fists

Was that an attempt at a witty retort? Mispelling my name? How were either of you adding anything? You simply summarized my post.

My apologies, its my lisdexia I tell you.

[bushy04]

http://www.webdogradio.us/video/tipclip/s2/

here is a clip or two about this myth

[Cocker16]

and also having a gun very little kick will help alot 2.

[Hobo_Joe]

Angered Fists - calm your ****ing hormones!!!! ppl post in here as it is a thread, on a forum, ppl post on forums, hence ppl posted in here!!!
They were not taking away from what you said mearly confirming what you have said. I for one listen to what Alpha has to say... he may be a psyco gun nut kid but he knows what he is talking about and a lot of noobies see his post and say "ahhhh".

So calm down and nice post... and what u moaning about a miss spelling for, get a life if that bothers you so much!!!

[theunforgiven]

aye^^

[Javaman]

I'd like to see a test done of how much a paintball expands to seal the barrel when shot. I too think that paintball to barrel match is greatly overrated. My theory is that as long as the paintball size is reasonably close to the barrel size (+.002/-.006) the ball will behave exactally the same regardless of how easy it is to roll or manually blow through the barrel. Either way the ball will expand to fit the barrel. Less gas is needed with a tighter fit since the ball will accelerate much quicker once the easier seal is made. When shooting PBs which are too small you will have to turn the velocity up so that the ball expands quicker to make the seal before the true acceleration happens. According to the philosophy of proper fit I've read so many times the PB stays in the barrel by itself without rolling. This is usually caused by seams. When was the last time you put a pb in a barrel and didn't see light leaking around the ball? The bottom line is that I really don't believe that accuracy is dictated at all by barrel to paint matching (except for drastic differences) since each pb will expand to fill the barrel.

[djsway]

What if you made paintball balls shaped into bullet form?

[dfdtrumpet]

you'd have to load them individaully, a hopper wouldn't work, and shaping them like that would be hard. I dont think it would help the accuraccy very much because since you cant rifle the barrel the "bullet" would just flip end over end

[DJS2]

i dont think paint to barrel match is overrated at all.. ive played with "seconds", primer, tork, evil, and many other brands of paint. a lot of the cheaper bags are just crap, and dont necessarily "fly everyway" but they do curve slightly. IMO, the paint and barrel is just as important as the match.. air pretty much just means that it makes sure the ball gets through the barrel at the right speed... meaning often when ur low on air the balls get stuck in the barrel.

not ragging on angered fists because the thought and stuff was there, but a barrel wasnt mentioned i dont believe. porting, length, bore, and the inside all play small parts in accuracy, as well as the type of paint, so.. basically what im trying to say that some good paint and a decent barrel matched together will most likely give u some good accurate shots.

[MP11]

I believe that I made a rather good reply to accuracy here. In there I believe I covered some issues that you have missed. Feel free to use some of that info in revising your post

-Mike