J & J 14" Ceramic - I'm Impressed

[dawump]

Hi All,

I've just received my J&J ceramic barrel, and so far I am VERY impressed. I bought it as a Medium bore barrel for when the paint is too big for my boomstick, but am now thinking it is better than the boomer for small paint too.

I usually do the "blow test" with paint and with Diablo Blaze it "pops" out of the boomstick.. a little resistance, then a good distance. With the J&J blowing isn't so satisfying as there is no resistance. In the past I thought that meant it was too big - but maybe not.

Here is what I have found.

Weight:
The J&J is freaky light. Compared to other barrels:

11" Standard barrel 193 grams
14" Boomstick 336 grams
14" J&J ceramic 138 grams!

Accuracy:
I'm yet to get out the bench clamp but from what I've shot this looks very consistent. My usual quick shoot test is:

1) 40 feet diagonally across my yard
2) 60 feet over the fence and hitting the tree in my neighbors yard ( and no, they don't care )
3) a 2" wide steel washing line pole at 20 feet
4) a telegraph pole at 40 feet
5) a telegraph pole at 60 feet

With my other barrels I do pretty good.. with the J&J I did INCREDIBLY good. It was also VERY consistent and shooting a string of 5 shots to all of targets gave very consistent grouping - more so than my other barrels.

Bad Paint:
One of the things that people claim the J&J can do well is shoot through a break. Here is what I found.

I took some paintballs from a big glass bowl I keep in the house which I fill with old paintballs now and again. Some of these are 4 month old zap that weren't even good when I got them. They've been in the house all that time, so they are trashed.

I rapid fired about 20 of them. About 5 broke. I then shot some good paint after that. The first 10 shots went a bit wild but then things straightened out again. It still wasn't perfect with some spin, but WAY better than the other barrels I have. Also there was less of a mess to deal with than the ( multi-ported ) boomstick. One thing I did notice was that after 30 minutes when I did another test they shot all over the place, so there was still a residue of paint in there, and when it dried it became more of an issue.

Also, when I say "Good Paint" that isn't really true. This is Diablo Blaze which scored 1.5 on Toms Bounce test of Sunday. Must be old. It was breaking in the hopper and the pods, and the field replaced it for me.

Can't wait to go play on the field with this! I know there is someone else out there who ordered a custom set from J&J with different bores - I don't remember who they are, but I do know why now!

Hope this is of interest.

Keith

[Recon]

What exactly does this barrel look like.... I have two J&Js, and I am not sure which you are talking about.

One has straight porting, and a small lip right before the front end, the other has two "Z"s porting right near the end of the barrel....

[dawump]

Mine has the Z porting and is a grey color. If you pick up your barrel and it feels suprising light then this is probably the ceramic barrel.

There is a reasonable picture at:

http://www.pbreview.com/251/1/0/

Keith

[Recon]

Yes, I have that one also. Says " J&J PErformance" up near the Z porting.


The other barrel is more interesting. It is also very light (I think it is the same type of material), but it is designed differnetly (should be able to post a picture soon).


I believe it is the same barrel that Rob from Pev's uses....

[dawump]

Do you like these barrels?

I got to play with mine yesterday for the first time. I really liked using it. I thought the consistency was pretty good and it was very quiet. I now like it more than by Boomstick for sure.

In the afternoon it started to snow pretty heavy in the afternoon and my balls were frozen ( paintballs that is ). I experienced some ball breaks and did find that after about another 5 shots it fired pretty well.

Keith