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paintballimpact.com / Gear Maintenance / Paint in the Barrel
Paint in the Barrel
Paint in the barrel is one of the most common maintenance issues for a player, and one of the most manageable. Paint can get stuck in the breech or marker barrel for a number of reasons. The first could be because of poor maintenance of the paintball. Paintballs are meant to be stored in cool, dry temperatures, and they should be used by a certain amount of time before they go bad. Paintballs should be stored properly so that they don't break in the barrel. Other factors that could effect paintballs chopping inside your marker include: the quality of the ammo you buy, the diameter of your paint compared to the diameter of the barrel hold, feeder jams, and the muzzle velocity of the paintball.
Maintaining Your Balls.
For paintballs to fly straight and not break in your barrel, it must be stored in such a way that it doesn't warp. When paintballs warp, the shell of the ball dimples, and the paint clumps up to one side of the ball. If the paint in the paintball does clump-up to one side of the ball it could stretch the once perfect sphere, or not fly straight because the weight is not distributed evenly throughout the sphere. If the paintballs become warped, they are prone to breaking in your marker. Here are some storage tips to keep your ammo working efficiently.
Paintballs are like people in that they are sensitive to temperature extremes. Paintballs do not thrive in hot attics or the trunk of a car, and they do not thrive in cold basements. Paintballs would prefer room temperatures. Paintballs also need dry environmental conditions to retain their perfect shape. So they should stay off the floor and out of damp basements.
Once you have taken good care of your balls, the next step is making sure that they travel through your marker barrel easily. The gold standard for marker ammo is .68 caliber, which means the diameter of both the paintball and the interior of the barrel is .68 hundredth of an inch. It would seem that buying ammo and barrels should be easy because everything is the same size, right? Yes, and No. The size .68 caliber is an approximate size of paintballs, some are actually .689 caliber, and some are .676 caliber, and there are other close variations. This same principle goes for marker barrels also. To overcome this challenge, you should own a set of barrels with multiple bore sizes.
The two solutions to this challenge are owning multiple barrels with multiple sizes, and testing out the year that you will be using in games. To have a good match between the marker barrel and paintball, you should insert a paintball in the barrel. If the paintball falls out of the barrel, the paintball is probably too small. If you put the paint in the barrel and it does not blow out easily, then it is probably too big. If you put a paintball in the barrel, try to blow it out by blowing on one end, and it if it blows out easily then you have a good fit.
The higher the quality rounds you have, the lower the chances are that they will break in your marker. Some high end paintballs include Blackout Paintballs from Blue Arc.
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