A Paintball Barrel Kit is the ultimate investment to achieve the best paintball accuracy. A good barrel kit helps your paintball marker achieve its best performance. How does a barrel kit work and why does it do this? Read on!

A paintball is an organic object and it is affected by the conditions around it. The shell is made of a gelatin or corn starch material and thus changes with temperature and humidity. A paintball is .68 caliber in theory, but the reality is its size and shape as well as its structure is constantly changing. Paintballs swell up when it’s warm or humid. The shell gets bouncy in the heat but gets brittle in the cold. A bag of paintballs in the afternoon will be a different size, shape and consistency than what they were in the morning. How the paintball fits in your barrel thus affects your accuracy. If the fit is too loose then your accuracy, air efficiency, and loudness of your shot suffers. If the fit is too tight then you will be breaking paintballs constantly, especially if it is cold or you have a particularly brittle batch of tournament-grade paintballs.

A paintball barrel kit is a system that provides multiple barrel diameters, allowing the player to match their current paintballs to a particular barrel Inner Diameter (ID) for optimum results. The simplest barrel kits are a complete combination of one piece barrels of different Ids. Another type of kit is a two piece design of a barrel front and multiple barrel backs if different ID such as the Custom Products Barrel Kits. The third type of kit is a three piece model consisting of a barrel front, a barrel back, and inserts or tubes of various different IDs that slide into the barrel back like the popular GOG Freak Barrel Kit.

A barrel kit is simple to use. Simply take a few of the paintballs you will be shooting that day and gently put them in one end of a barrel, barrel back, or insert in your barrel kit. If they roll straight through then the bore is too large. Your accuracy will suffer, you will lose air efficiency, and your marker will sound louder than it should. If the paintball won’t fit without a significant amount of force then the bore is too small. The odds of paintballs breaking in the barrel when you shoot will drastically increase. When you find a barrel back or insert that the paintball will fit in without rolling out, then hold it to your lips and blow it like a blowgun. If you can blow it through the other end without busting a lung then you have found the perfect fit! This inner diameter will yield the optimum accuracy and consistency while causing the least ball breakage in the barrel. If the batch of paintballs you are shooting that day are particularly brittle or if it is a cold day (typically under 55 degrees F) then step the bore up one size to prevent barrel breakage.

We hope this article on how to use a paintball barrel kit helps you make an informed decision and makes your paintball experience more enjoyable! If you have any questions then please call us so we can help you choose the best barrel kit for your needs.