ready to start making chips - compact barrel suggestons?

I just cant find exactly what I want, so I figure I'd bust out the endmills and get to work. I guess I need to decide exactly what barrel I want first since that will dictate part of what I'm making.

I plan on doing a 6" front guard with upper and lower rails. It will attach just like the stock front guard, but will overlap the receiver by ~1.5".

I want to find an 8-10" barrel with a mock suppressor to use with this. I'm totally open to suggestion. I was looking at the bigbore T98, 8" barrel with a custom fake suppressor over it. They seem to have good reviews.
 

What recommendations do y'all have for barrels in the 8-10" range?

Here's my "benchtop" mill set-up (830 lbs!) with some of the hunks of aluminum and such I have laying around. I have blocks of magnesium I was also considering due to weight.

That looks like a modder's paradise.

As a hobby, I build firearms from scratch as well as demilitarized kits, I make medieval armour for the various re-enactment groups, have been making custom knives for a couple decades, done various metal casting, started making blackpowder artillery......the paintball was just waiting to happen! 

.....I can't look at something made from metal and not want to mess with it. It's an addiction. What you can't see in the pic is the little path through my garage I forced to walk through with the tons of domestic and exotic woods curing on shelves, the boxes of various animal parts and the tons of assorted wrought iron, alloy steel and other odds and ends.

If you ever need something parkerized or anodized (just anodized, not dyed), I do those processes as well.

You think you could make a fake suppressor and some how fit it over a regular barrel? You could find a longer barrel and just cover most of it up with the suppressor.

I was looking at doing that for the Bigshot 10" assault barrel. Instead of having a fake suppressor stick out an additional 5", I'd just make one to cover the barrel.

If I use a 10" barrel, I could just use a standard Salvo front guard and modify it to sit back farther and cover the front 1.5" of receiver. I'll have to lay some parts blanks out and see how it all fits and looks.

Ah so you're going CQB with it huh Krag? Very cool. 

After seeing that mill setup, I know who you'd get along with REAL well. If Starscream was still actively around or Syclops, you guys could talk shop for days I'm sure.

Anyway back to it, the Bigshot barrels are generally good from what I've been told. I can't wait to see what you come up with, btw, I did leave ya a couple links in the other thread I replied to. Figure I could save you some money instead of purchasing a Salvo front shroud.

just keep in mind guys, the faux suppressor or in paintball we like to call it
a "rain cover" (since it covers the porting for rain days) people get all pissy
when "suppressor" word is used :Pjust fyi


also looks like you have some fun in there
also wish that you were around when I was in my hardcore modding modes

Yeah, I started off going long, then I used my sons CQB A5 and loved it. The main fields we play at are all close action with my style of play, for the most part. I generally like to sneak and crawl to close distance, then engage. Of course, being 44 yrs old, 6'2" and 250lbs....I make a pretty good target doing that as well, and often come home looking like a red-spotted leopard! I have a funny video my son took from a couple weeks back. One minute left in the game, so I charge two bunkers. Was doing fine except for the third guy with the speedball set-up. 14 hits to the shoulder chest and neck. Of course, it was the last game and I ditched the outer garment just before it. My nipple is still various shades of black and blue.

Being an avid hobby gun-builder, and seeing the crossover items from firearms and paintball, I'm always mindful anything that could be misconstrued as NFA type objects! Hence the shroud will either have holes in it, or be a solid fit over the barrel. Anything with an empty volume, even without baffles, that could be considered a sound dampening object is a bad idea. I'll be doing several holes in it like many of the commercial shrouds.


P.S. If you ever need something special made, I have a small 9x19 lathe, a mill w/9"x32" table, full heat treating equipment for both oil and air quenching steels, 20 ton press, and quite a bit of other forming equipment. One thing I wish I had was aluminum welding. I have three welding machines...gas, arc, MIG. My MIG is DC current for steel only though.

I've spent a bit of time trying to find reviews on a few different barrels. I still haven't made up my mind on what I want.

Any of y'all used the RAP4 rifled barrels? I can get a 12" RAP4 rifled for ~$35 including shipping. Straight rifling seems to work well on cannonballs, but I couldn't really find any reviews from people who own a RAP4 rifled barrel.

The other two options I was looking at was the J&J ceramic and the Bigshot already mentioned here. I was really wanting a 10" barrel, but the 12" would work. I wish there were more side-by-side online video comparisons of barrels.

I've always heard good reviews on the J&J and lapco. Almost got the J&J until I got the barrel I run with now.

I have the 14" J&J and I love it.
My question is that with a background in firearms building, have you thought about custom making your own barrel? That way you can get the size you want and maybe experiment with it as far as rifling and porting and such.

I don't have the tooling to do gundrilling. To get a 5/8" coolant fed drill and  0.684 reamer long enough to do a 10" barrel along with lapping and polishing jigs...I'd be out waaaaay more than the cost of a barrel!

I wonder how well a 1:48 twist 0.69 cal blackpowder barrel would work with a paintball gun?  spin it or tear it apart?

try it and see, lol.

it would be interesting to document, but my thinking
is that you would need some hardshell paint for shizzle

It may break it apart, but on the good side you now have a paint flame thrower

Well, all my .69 barrels are smoothbore. Oh well. It would have been interesting to mess with.

Started on my custom front guard. It's starting as some 2" x 1/8" wall 6061-T6 aluminum tube. I cut it to the same length as the standard factory guard. I then milled the side flats, using the first one to index the second and so on. I cut a flat section on the top and bottom where I'll mount rails.

The back will get slotted on the top and bottom so it slides over the front inch of the marker receiver housing with a tab that will insert and get screwed down just like the original.

The barrel shroud will be made from 1 3/8" x 0.030" wall chrome moly tubing. It'll get some aluminum spacers that will fit snug around the barrel and snug inside the guard so nothing rattles. The shroud will be bead blasted and parkerized to a mil-spec black phosphate coating.

Here's a pic so far.  The video just shows it from various angles so you can see it better.

kragaxe wrote:

As a hobby, I build firearms from scratch as well as demilitarized kits, I make medieval armour for the various re-enactment groups, have been making custom knives for a couple decades, done various metal casting, started making blackpowder artillery......the paintball was just waiting to happen! 

.....I can't look at something made from metal and not want to mess with it. It's an addiction. What you can't see in the pic is the little path through my garage I forced to walk through with the tons of domestic and exotic woods curing on shelves, the boxes of various animal parts and the tons of assorted wrought iron, alloy steel and other odds and ends.

If you ever need something parkerized or anodized (just anodized, not dyed), I do those processes as well.

 you should set up a shop in the For Sale section, maybe drum up some business for ye.

i want some armor,... whats something like that cost? like a suit of half plate?

I haven't kept up much with the armoring. I still do some projects here and there for fun. I'm doing a helm for a guy right now based on some Saxon ridgehelms. This one's for sport combat and is being made from 316 stainless steel, with etched decorative brass plates and a titanium chain camaille (drapes around the lower half of the helmet down to the shoulders). Most of what I do now is made from 4140 chrome moly and is heat treated.

A custom full suit of historical-reproduction plate armor ranged from, $8,000 to $20,000 ten years ago. Price greatly depends on style. Sport combat armor was slightly less. Museum quality starts at about $30k.

Some half-plate with leather and maille would probably be around $3-5k depending on the quality. Before you buy any armor....get lots of references, never pay up front (20% down payment before starting is standard), and look at stuff they've made before in person if possible.

Every August ~10,000 medieval people gather in PA for the Pensic Wars. Great place to see and meet all the current medieval armourers in the USA.

www.armourarchive.org has a lot of info as well.

I've been wanting to finish out some stuff I started years ago....but the metal seems to have shrunk and doesn't fit anymore!

pennsic is actually just outside of Erie.

Here's the main page for the event. There's a crapload of other sites out there as well.

http://www.pennsic.net/index.html
http://www.pennsic.net/index.html

its over for this year,. i had friends come up for the event... yet to go myself,.. but it looks awesome...

I've been trying to make it up there for 18 years and still haven't made it. I'd like to bring some of my medieval artillery pieces. Even just firing blanks off a hillside, my 6" cal is a blast. My wife, of course, wants to go shopping. We've been in the SCA since 1990.

kragaxe wrote:

I've been wanting to finish out some stuff I started years ago....but the metal seems to have shrunk and doesn't fit anymore!

Don't you hate it when your metal armor shrinks?
But I agree with Bock, put a section in the "For Sale" area, with your metal skills I bet the possibities would be endless for marker assoceries.

Unfortunately, I rarely have time to finish my own projects. No way I could commit to somebody else!

My J&J barrel is supposed to be delivered today, but I'm about to hop on a plane and head out to the Mojave Desert. Go figure. At least when I return I'll have a gift waiting!