Round ball and rifled barrels

[Memornix]

I am looking for a longer than stock pmi trracer barrel and Armson has some in stock but they are rifled. I don't really expect any real benefit from the rifling with round ball but I am also hoping there is no detriment.

Does anyone have experience with armson rifled barrels and round ball that they can share?

[Loophole]

Curious as well.. I always wanted to try out a hammerhead kit but they are pricey and i have heard mixed reviews about the rifling.

[XEMON]

I had one on my phantom ... It was amazing!!!

[capitalpaintball]

I shoot Armson barrels on 37 of my guns. I love them. I have the 16 inch Trracer threaded on my Aci Hornet. shoots great, just needs a fingernail polish detent.
Personally I dont think the rifling makes a difference its just a Quality barrel that shoots great..

[Toestr]

Downside? You'll probably lose some efficiency. Nothing too terrible probably.

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[Trbo323]

If it's higher quality than whatever you are using it will be a better barrel. FSR aside, the only thing rifling does is hold onto paint after a barrel break and make it more difficult to clear out.

Rifling as a feature is just a snake oil used to sell more barrels.

Tom Kaye did testing on it in the 90s, even went as far as building a marker that spun the whole breach/barrel up to speed before firing. The results were basically within the realm of tolerances and error, I think his words were "not significant"

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[Spider!]

I used a hammerhead fairly often for events.

TK's experiments were with round balls. Yes, spinning round balls is pointless.

When paint has seams and bumps, it comes out more like a well pitched baseball curve ball. With the random defect, it's not too productive. With a case of paint where every ball has the same defect, it seriously reduces the knuckleballs that wander randomly. They corkscrew as group. Shooting cross-wind is even better. In that situation at an event it can make your weekend quite nice while others struggle to hit anything. I had a few like that, just three or four.

If you get to pick your paint, a rifled barrel may not do anything beyond a regular barrel for you.

[Shaftski]

Or run a stanchy barrel adapter. Then you can run any cocker barrel you want, but you need the modded pump handle or you need to mod your stock one.

[Memornix]

This is what I am currently doing and it is a pain mostly due to marker design. Let's just say, this is not a stock trracer

[Trbo323]

One thing that should be mentioned, I've never seen any proof that any company has actually managed to spin the paint. Hammerhead had a fairly terrible "high speed" video that you could only see the paint spinning the way they said it was if you used your imagination. It also claimed that in addition to the rifled spin their barrel was also putting backspin on the same ball. So basically hammerhead is claiming to spin paint on 2 different axis and that equals a straight shot. Laws of physics anyone?

ALL that aside, there's also the problem of the rifling actually grabbing the paintball in order to spin it in the first place. In a firearm that's done by an extreme under bore and the rifling digging into the bullet. If you dig into a paintball though, it just breaks. Also also, even if you can overcome all that you are still just going to be spinning the shell as the liquid inside doesn't have anything pushing it to spin with the shell (backspin barrels work a little different)

So yeah, rifling = snake oil in paintball

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[BrickHaus]

I have had mixed results with them. They shoot really well, but you arent shooting through a break either, so they are kinda finicky.

I always thought air being able to equally pass around the ball via the rifling was the science to the great shot. Giving up efficency for consiatancy. But not spinning the ball in the process either.

But I will say they are in the respectable range in my perspective.

[Seajay]

The Armson barrels also have backwards rifling but it is all smooth. The point for Armson and Hammerhead (not the oneshots) was to manipulate the airflow, not spin the ball.
Hammerhead barrels you tweak the setup with the fin sizers and adjust velocity until the ball shoots predictably, tuning the shot as compared to just hitting a specific velocity. So you could be shooting 265fps after "tuning" but getting very consistent ball patterns and keeping the same range as shooting 280. Didn't always work but if you take the time to do it I found it does work.

Interestingly when I have shot roundball out of my nemesis barrels it does rotate the ball through the barrel, but that controlled rotation instantly stops once it leaves the barrel and will do whatever it feels like. With good sized paint, about .684-.682 it has been surprisingly consistent (accurate). I think it is more a reflection of the quality of barrel rather than the rifling itself. The nemesis barrels have less overall rifling but the lands are more aggressive, so there is more smoothbore overall to affect a roundball.

Hammerhead barrels reverse the lands, so the ball rides on a flat land and the air is cut around that. The reason FSR work well in Hammerhead barrels is because the fins fit inside those lands almost perfectly which controls the rotation.

Never shot an Armson but have seen them in the field. I love my hammerhead Bangstixx.

[PBGunny]

I still have a couple of Armson barrels in various lengths that I used back in the early to mid 90's.
I had one on my PMI 3 and bought a couple for my Cocker.
It was really hit or miss sometimes and I always wondered why and tried to see what was going on.
I took various measurements on the bore size using inside bore calipers a number of years ago to try and understand it better.
I measured at the smallest readings out to the end of the flat and the smallest readings I would get was around .692-.695"
Which explains why it shot better with paint like Pro-Ball, big diameter stuff.
The only time I ever used them was when the weather was bad and the paint would swell badly.
I had fairly good results for those conditions, but the brake really created a cloud of air in front of you.
Back to that air efficency I think.
They are really loud with the shorty 8" barrel I have, kind of like a barking dog.
With the size of paint these days, they have been relegated to the bag with all my other old barrels.
I wouldn't recommend them these days.
Better off with a barrel that you can size the paint to than this.
They look really tactical, except the ones that have the phallic thing on the front which also have spiral holes in them.

[Dusty Bottoms]

I love Armson Pro barrels, especially the short 8-10in versions. They look great on mags, and are fun and loud. That being said, like PBGunny found, they're hugely overbored for modern paint. If the Armson rifling gimmick ever did anything 20+ years ago, I don't think that really applies to what we usually have to shoot now. I did the most sensible thing and had one of my 8in cocker threaded Armson Pro's freak bored, and now I'm a happy camper.

[Chappy]

So my anecdotal experience… when I shot one on my mega z I found it was consistently mediocre but not picky with paint. Meaning I felt that with crappy paint I would choose it over my boa. But if the paint was decent I’d use the boa.
played Battle of Britain at skirmish on a wet cold December day with , well, skirmish paint. White lumpy .674 SCS. Nobody was hitting the broad side of a barn. When I switched to the armson the groupings tightened and I could suddenly reliably hit someone more then 20 ft away.

[Bow]

I have a 6 inch vintage armson that I got off a ranger that shoots absolute Darts but only if the paint is at the rear of the breach and hasn't rolled out. Lol.