SpudFiles

I was wondering if anyone has ever used a paintball barrel for ammo other than paintballs. I want a rifled barrel to shoot baby carrots out of and paintball barrels seem to be about the right size. Do you think this would work well?

A lot of them use the phrase "progressively rifled barrel", and I assume that it means the rifling starts off at the breech with a low twist rate and the twist rate increases as the projectile goes towards the muzzle. Can anyone confirm this?

-goose_man

I guess you could do it. Mine's not progressively rifled I think though. I don't see any reason why you couldn't use it, as long as it fits.

I just read somewhere that rifling on a paintball barrel is "straight rifling" and doesn't twist. This seems odd. Can anyone tell me if this is so (either always or sometimes)?

-goose_man

No. most paintball barrels are not rifled, but the ones I know of twists. That is why it is called rifling.

EDIT: Whoops! I have read more on the matter, and it turns out that there also are straight rifled barrels. They are uncomon, but they work on the principal the the less rotarion, the less a paintball curves.

Well, I know most aren't rifled, but okay; I guess what I read was wrong about the straight rifling.

I'll get back to you once I try the barrel for carrots.

-goose_man

Bringing up and old post but thought I'd share what I know. 99% of paintball barrels are perfectly smooth on the inside. There has been a lot of theory about rifling a barrel for paintballs which are a round, "liquid" filled ball. A few companies made an actual rifled paintball barrel. Armson was one. Here's a link to another (and a good pic).
http://www.proteamdirect.com/brrifbar.html

Straight "rifling" was also done a bit. I have some old J&J brass barrels that used it. They're just straight lines down the inside of the barrel. The idea was to prevent the paintball from spinning / turning to try and make it shoot straighter.