Back in the day (90-91) people used to use a little nail polish right at the end of the barrel to impart spin to the ball as it left the barrel. One of the markers of choice during that era was of course the Line SI Bushmaster and if you recall the barrel system would let you orient your barrel anywhere thru 360 degrees. So, you could manipulate your barrel during a game orient that spin for the desired effect, back spin, right/left, etc..
Even on some barrels of the day there was a "grain" within the barrel that would influence the flight of the ball. That is, in my opinion why brass has a following, that surface can be manipulated and polished much easier than others materials.
The internal shape of barrels has always been one of my favorite debates. Today's barrels seem to be mere cylendars and if they are multiple peice barrels they are just cylendars of multiple ID's, there is no real contoured shape to the barrel interior. The shape that I've envisioned as working best would be; The back of the barrel to be large to allow the ball to meet the bore. From the large back the ID would constrict down to a control bore, this would be the tightest portion of the barrel intended to let the ball accelerate under a tight directional control. The next section of the barrel would be un-ported but the ID would be slightly increasing to start to end, releasing the control pressure on the ball and letting it almost float freely in the barrel by the end of the section. The final section of the barrel would be ported and have almost no remaining contact with the ball, the sole purpose of this section would be to let the ball transition from the moving air mass in side the barrel into the still air mass in front the barrel so that the ball's shape would not distort causing the ball's flight path to deviate.
Even on some barrels of the day there was a "grain" within the barrel that would influence the flight of the ball. That is, in my opinion why brass has a following, that surface can be manipulated and polished much easier than others materials.
The internal shape of barrels has always been one of my favorite debates. Today's barrels seem to be mere cylendars and if they are multiple peice barrels they are just cylendars of multiple ID's, there is no real contoured shape to the barrel interior. The shape that I've envisioned as working best would be; The back of the barrel to be large to allow the ball to meet the bore. From the large back the ID would constrict down to a control bore, this would be the tightest portion of the barrel intended to let the ball accelerate under a tight directional control. The next section of the barrel would be un-ported but the ID would be slightly increasing to start to end, releasing the control pressure on the ball and letting it almost float freely in the barrel by the end of the section. The final section of the barrel would be ported and have almost no remaining contact with the ball, the sole purpose of this section would be to let the ball transition from the moving air mass in side the barrel into the still air mass in front the barrel so that the ball's shape would not distort causing the ball's flight path to deviate.
Too true. Back when I had my Flatline, I was in the middle of a scenario game when it got finicky on me. For some reason the balls would come out, dive, climb and dive again. Pretty cool swoopy motion to watch, but almost useless for hitting anyone. I was about to walk off so I could calibrate it, but then I found the perfect use - a heavily wooded hill with a stone wall on the top and some of the other team hiding behind it. Everyone was arcing fire into the trees and balls would break before they got halfway to their targets. Well, I started walking around and taking test shots before I got the range just right, but then all my shots swooped right under the tree branches, raced up the hill and dove down over the wall. I must have taken out about half a dozen of them before they fell back. Complete fluke so it's a hard one to take credit for, but my nearby teammates were laughing pretty damn hard when the figured out what I was doing.
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