carbon fiber barrels?

[paintslinger]

i've been in and out of the sport recently. i come back and i see all these markers with carbon fiber like barrels. whats up with that folks? care to fill me in?

[magman007]

carbon fiber barrels are light and straight shooting?

[Enemy]

plus they look cool??

[SlartyBartFast]

They're light, they look cool, and they'll shoot as straight as any other tube.

Bonus for the manufacturers: Probably cheap as all get go to make and players are crazy enough to pay a premium. :p

[purple]

they're okay, i have a ccm carbon graphite kit 14''. not much better than anything else i've shot. i guess i got suckered in by the hype and thought 1 inch sizers make a difference


Purple

[yakitori]

stiffi mamba switch kit rocks my socks. Better than any other barrel kit Ive used, although I havent really put a lot of paint through it yet.

I love stiffi barrels. Thats would be all I would use if given the choice and funds.

[Dryden]

Carbon fiber barrels are light ... rediculously light. That's it.

They're also more expensive and more difficult to care for. You cannot (well, should not) use anything other than a rubber or silicone squeegee on a CF barrel, otherwise it voids the warranty, if the barrel even has one. Fibrous materials, like battle swabs, can cut grooves into the carbon fiber and even rip out pieces of the barrel from the area around the barrel porting.

The two major vendors of CF barrels right now are Stiffi and CCM, but they're actually the exact same product, made by the same companies, just with a different look. Both brands of barrels have their carbon tubes rolled by a company named Site, Inc., while CCM handles all the aluminum work. CCM's does have a better warranty, but thats the only difference vs the Stiffi.

CCM has a carbon/graphite composite barrel in production, which will have the same external appearance but be far stronger and not suffer wear from carbon breakout, making them safe for any type of squeegee or battle swab.

IMHO, carbon fiber is the current fashionable placebo. By the time you get one, being this late to the game, everyone else will have moved onto The Next Big Thing(tm). :rolleyes:

[VFX_Fenix]

Insanely light, durable, and EXPENSIVE!!!! at least on the buying end. As far as barrels go, I don't like CF as a barrel material since part of the purpose (to me) of the barrel is to help ballance the gun and add mass to reduce felt recoil (I know, I know, with the markers on the market today recoil isn't THAT big of an issue). I owned a Stiffi for... eh... a month, used it on my Cocker and, yes, it shot better than my SS Long Shot, TASO Pro serries, J&J Ceramic, and even my stock barrel (all of which were too big) with the paint I was using but I felt like I was missing my barrel all the time (rather disconcerting).

[yakitori]

how is anyone having to "mess" with thier barrel all the time. All you do it unscrew it and screw it in and clean it. Actually the silicone squeegees are great because they are soft (good for your pocket), they are cheap, and they clean very effectively. I wouldnt use a battle swab on my aluminum barre either because most ppl get sand/dirt in them and then swab thier barrels. And that isnt good either.

Nobody has mentioned how quiet stiffi barrels are compared to others. Or how they recover from a barrel break better than other barrels.

And yes it is w/ any product in paintball. It is the next big thing :rolleyes: but that doesnt mean it isnt good. I know from experience they are some of the best barrels out there.

[zeroack]

I've been running a CCM carbon barrel set for better then a year now. I love it. The only problem I've had is ONE of the inserts sticking.(the other inserts are fine and a dab of oil fixed it sticking) That was no fault of the carbon fiber. It's light and on some markers will throw your balance off for a bit until you get use to having it on. If you have the means to get one do it. You won't regret it.

Zero

[68magOwner]

i shoot a J&J edge kit (new style with the preety tips), teammate shotos a stiffi switch kit, both on the same model marker, mine is more sonsistent by a good +-8 fps (i get +-2, he gets +-10 with the same paint), which, could be accounted for by my more broken in regs, but, i guess ill have to try his kit on my marker. His marker is not noticiably lighter at all, i suppose its as nice as any other kit, but, not worth any extra $ imo

[Lohman446]

Nobody has mentioned how quiet stiffi barrels are compared to others. Or how they recover from a barrel break better than other barrels.

I haven't seen any proof to this. I have heard a lot of people say "this cleans so good" etc. - but I beleive them to be biased. I would want to be able to justify my purchase as more than fashion and weight too. I personally feel the best cleanign barrel I have used is the old one piece zero gravities. I think people who use the poison arrow system beleive theres to be the best cleaning. I would like to see actual evidence - quantitative not qualitative, that proves these claims.

[SlartyBartFast]

I would like to see actual evidence - quantitative not qualitative, that proves these claims.

:rofl:

Hope you're not expecting to get that proof anytime soon. :p

It amazes me the magical properties that people will believe barrels posses. The elves, gnomes, fairies, and other mythical creatures inhabiting barrels are matched in number and power only by those that affect the physics of projectile flight in "closed-bolt" markers.

:rofl:

[FireITup14]

i always thought they were stronger but my friend stepped on his 16" stiffi and it broke and caved in.

[Lohman446]

:rofl:

Hope you're not expecting to get that proof anytime soon. :p

It amazes me the magical properties that people will believe barrels posses. The elves, gnomes, fairies, and other mythical creatures inhabiting barrels are matched in number and power only by those that affect the physics of projectile flight in "closed-bolt" markers.

:rofl:

You'd be surprised at what people will beleive. I was at the field one time and took out my STAINLESS freak kit. It just so happened the owner wanted to sell an order of the same kits that he had ordered with mine. I broke a ball in it, left it there, and targeted a barrel some distance away - pretty soon (about six shots) 90% of the balls were on target with a few wingers. I offered anyone else to try it with whatever they shot, noone wanted to because they for some reason perceived this was exceptional (ok.. I may have hinted that it was by saying wow, or some such thing ;) ). Someone else may have commented on the incredibleness of stainless steel at doing this (and I didn't even ask them to, its how hype starts :D ) Sold a lot of stainless freak kits that day.

Funny thing is, later in the day, on my own, I did the same thing with a one-piece aluminum barrel. The point is this... your exactly right. Sometimes paintball players don't think through what they say, here, see in a quantitative manner. Its harder to BS with comparable quantitative measurements. Its very easy to do with qualitative measurements, or with non-comarable quantitative measurements.

Too much of our review of equipment is based on qualitative analysis done by a baised source. When quantitative measurement is done a lot of things that everyone assumes are true because they have heard and "seen" it themselves are disproven.

[CKY_Alliance]

i always thought they were stronger but my friend stepped on his 16" stiffi and it broke and caved in.

I was told they were very durable.My friend was tellign me about a booth they had at a tournamnet and they had stiffi and a metal pipe and if you could dent the barral or brake it they would give you a whole set.No one broke the barrel all day.So they must be strong or hes full of BS.(break it with the pipe)

[yakitori]

I never said that it is the best barrel for shooting through breaks, but of the barrels Ive owned, it is better at self cleaning. I dont claim it to be the BEST barrel out there. I would have to say that yours is the best barrel out there. Your gun freakin rocks man. You have the best barrel, and the best gun, and best tank of anyone I know.

Of the barrel kits Ive used:

Pipe
Freak

The stiffi is better IMO, because its lighter, quieter, and shoots just as straight as any of the top barrels out there, given good paint.

And I would not write of the stiffi just because someone got +-10 compared to +-3. Geez, there are lots of reasons that couldve happened.

And also the guy who stepped on his barrel deserved to have it broken. Thats just outright retarded, and I dont believe it ever happened. I dont know of a single person that would step on an 80 dollar barrel (or any equipment) just to see how durable it is. :rolleyes:

[50 cal]

I have a 10" and 14" 32* barrels. They shoot extremely accurate. I shoot AllStar through them if the field has it.

[jewie27]

They are called STiffis. LOL.

[bull]

I have a stiffi fixed ID barrel, this has been the best barrel I have used to date. Very accurate and when I did have a break, I would flip the marker over shoot 3 times and then start playing again like a ball never broke. The barrel is also the quietest I have used. Now this is compare to various freak barrels, manufactor barrels, lapco, dye, and various SP barrels (fixed ID). This is firing the barrel on a Tac-One.

[automikey]

:rofl:

Hope you're not expecting to get that proof anytime soon. :p

It amazes me the magical properties that people will believe barrels posses. The elves, gnomes, fairies, and other mythical creatures inhabiting barrels are matched in number and power only by those that affect the physics of projectile flight in "closed-bolt" markers.

:rofl:



I put my CCM kit and my freak kit side-by-side, and started reading aloud from this thread. I was quickly assaulted by an angry mob of elves, gnomes, fairies, and other mythical creatures.

Then, when I said "closed-bolt", them pummeled me with the CCM barrel. It sure is tough, but I don't know about quiet. All I can hear is ringing in my ears.

:rofl:

[Codekevin0403]

you can't go wrong with a stiffi

it also seems to break every rule i've learned about paintball. I remember reading an article that said that you needed at least 6-8 inches of useful barrel to make it accurate, but the stiffi switch has only a 1 inch breech but shoots just as accurate if not more accurate then, say a boomstick. That's my experience.

Oh and i didnt' mention the thing is the lightest barrel i've ever felt

[automikey]

My CCM kit is very quiet and also very accurate.

Less weight at the front of the marker makes snap shooting even faster.

Get a kit, you will never know what size paint you will be using at different fields. No use in paying all that money for a barrel and then having lousy accuracy or barrel breaks because your paint/barrel don't match.

Now that I have it I really don't want to use anything else.

If you get a kit and the sizers go all the way into a mag body so you can't reach them, see my thread "CCM/Stiffi bore sizer removal tool". You can make it yourself! :)

[Deathshadow9k]

i always thought they were stronger but my friend stepped on his 16" stiffi and it broke and caved in.

i find that hard to believe, when the stiffi first came out i was there to witness the product testing that another store was doing, we ran over it with a ford f350 super diesel and it was fine, we banged it on counters and desktops all over the place like freakin drumsticks. the barrel worked great until the one equalizer, shot a marble through it and it started to unwrap. other than that it is a great barrel and shot just as well as a boomstick the same length as far as accuracy at 50ft

[SlartyBartFast]

we ran over it with a ford f350 super diesel and it was fine.

Well, it's not the point of the thread but:

It doesn't matter what you run something over with. In fact, if you ran over the berrel with a monster truck or the biggest piece of farm equipment you can find you'd probably be LESS liekly to break the barrel than if you ran over it with a bicycle.

Why? Tire pressure and concentration/distribution of force. The 32psi from a road vehicle (no matter what its size) can be easily supported by a cylinder such as a barrel. Monster trucks and farm vehices use low tire pressure so would be even easier to support. But, a concentrated load, such as from an 80+psi bicycle tire might be enough to break the object.

Just some considerations when viewing demonstrations such as the above.