Paintball

[Fubarius]

One of the first reusable practice paintballs were the Lazerballs. Soft, very Nerf like in feel, they did the job adequately. The company envisioned indoor fields where these could be used and not have the mess of normal paintballs. Now from what I remember around 99 or 2000 they had worries about people bringing in outside normal paintballs, or stealing them to use at home, so they made them in .80 caliber so that they'd be incompatible with ordinary paintball guns. To shoot these balls they had BrassEagle create a .80 caliber version of their Stingray II. Now this idea didn't last very long, and not long after they switched to a standard size. A few years back I managed to find a pair on ebay, along with about a 1000 .80 caliber lazerballs. I bought them from a police training center who was changing over to simuniton I believe.


Here are my two Lazerball guns, exactly as I received them. Looks nearly indistinguishable from a normal Stingray II. Now my personal Stingray II is a bit overly modified for comparison, so we'll be comparing it to an older Stingray I.


Side by side comparison with a normal Stingray. Same Stingray logo on the side, same warning label on the other side.


Here's the cocking knobs, Stingray on the left, Lazerball on the right. Nice to know they finally made an easier to grip cocking knob.


Inside shot of the grip frames, Stingray on the left, Lazerball on the right. Some noticeable differences (sear plate being the most obvious), but these are changes from the old Stingrays to the newest Stingrays. The Lazerball gun grip frame is internally identical to a later Stingray II grip frame.


Internal shot, Stingray on the top, Lazerball on the bottom. From the valve on back they're identical. It's the front where the differences start to show.


Closer shot of the bolts. You can clearly see the Lazerball bolt is much larger in size, and lacks an o-ring groove.


Front shot of the bolts. Easy to spot the stereotypical dent on the bottom of the bolt from the steel detent.


Barrel comparison. I managed to dig up a stock Stingray II barrel to compare it with. Stingray II barrel on the top, Lazerball barrel on the bottom. Obviously you can't just stick the Lazerball barrel on a normal Stingray.


Front shot of the barrels. Here's the only externally visible difference between the two guns.


Here's something interesting. The internal bore is so large that the barrel pin grooves cause these holes in the barrel.


You can see how much the pins protrude into the bore. So no chance of using an .80 caliber paintball, squishy foam only.


Lazerballs compared to a normal paintball (some Marbelizer I found in the back of my closet).


How the balls fit in the barrel. The Marbelizer is quite swollen from age. The Lazerball has a naturally tight fit, especially around the seam where it was molded.


Now since these came out before barrel condoms were common, they had to make a .80 caliber barrel plug.

In use these are a lot of fun, though they're obviously not an exact recreation of paintball. Local shop had a pair of these as well. We'd turn them down to about 150fps and blast each other in the shop after hours.

[pillage]

Oooh, it looks like a superball gun. It is kind of cool.

[Cocker Master]

If only the balls were harder, it would make for an excellent home security system.

[HurtCow]

You could shoot grapes out of them.

[Drum]

Very nice pictures and description of some unique guns.

D

[glaman5266]

Very nice. Descriptive pics.
I might have to look around for one just for kicks...

[himurax13]

Originally Posted by Cocker Master

If only the balls were harder, it would make for an excellent home security system.

Remember the Rufus T-Balls? I bet I could put down an angry mob with those.

[BretG]

Very interesting.
What velocity were the Lazerballs to be used at and what range can they get?

[Fubarius]

Originally Posted by BretG

Very interesting.
What velocity were the Lazerballs to be used at and what range can they get?

I seem to remember them originally suggesting a rather low velocity, like below 200fps. We only ever used them at extremely close range (30 feet at the most, widest spot in the shop), so we turned them down even lower. The guns were capable of much higher velocity. You can see in picture no. 6 how much I have the velocity adjuster cranked in (choke type, turn in for slower).

Of course these days the same company sells .68 cal balls in both the squishy foam, and a harder more reball'ish version called Lazerball Pro.

[bmann61]

i have a stingray I laying around somewere at my house or my parents not sure were, but seeing the gun brings back memories of playing woods ball with my friends down by the leigh river back in the day.