has anyone ever seen dual spring feed?

[ultralight]

spring feed tubes, like the longbow, can be seen pretty regularly. wether it be kp rifles, palmer products, or pt pistols. so why hasn't anyone used two of them simultaneously?

most milsim guys HATE hoppers, so some opt for stick or spring mag feed.
the biggest problem with stick feed is the lack of ammo. so why not mount two side by side and have a gate where they feed into the breech? when one mag runs dry, just flip the gate over and feed the other mag. you could even attatch both of them side by side as one removable unit. this would give something like 30 rounds (15 per mag) in a smaller package.

here are a few non-paintball examples:
noestead
halo shotgun

after having built a brass gun in the past, it seems that this is very doable with something like a brass tube sheridan marker. sure, it would be crude and heavy, but it would be a start.

well, who has thoughts on this?

[FinchMan]

I seem to remember someone making one before. Possibly Punishers Customs?

[eric_503]

what if you run one on each side of the gun and have like a trap door/slot thing that you can pull and push when you want to open or cut off the paintballs from coming into the breech (mmm brass and wood goodness........)

[Jaan]

I've thought along those lines before, I don't see why it wouldn't be doable. However, it seems like the Q-loader would be the optimal solution for compactness and amount of ammo it can carry.

Now, what if you took two feed tubes side by side, cut then lengthwise and attached then side by side so the profile would be somewhat of a figure 8, and used a wave spring and one gate into the chamber. It would be something like a dual stack firearms magazine. Now that would be trick.

[ultralight]

that would be pretty cool, although woudn't you get less rounds in the same length of mag? or are you talking about having two tubes with what ammounts to a channel between them allowing for the use of a single spring?

i had originally thought that double stack was impossible due to loading problems (balls not wanting to alternate properly), but i was thinking of an oval mag. having the tubes separate and single fed solves that proplem. it also cuts down on complexity all around as you could just lock one follower and feed both tubes at once.

finding a suitable spring might be a pain, but it wouldn't be very hard to make one with a simple two pronged jig.

and with a series of ramps, you wouldn't even need an alternating gate. just neck it down to one channel. that still may lead to jams if not done right though.

and yes, the q is the solution to this problem, although it can be a bit cost prohibitive. and it's complexity turns some off.

[Jaan]

that would be pretty cool, although woudn't you get less rounds in the same length of mag? or are you talking about having two tubes with what ammounts to a channel between them allowing for the use of a single spring?

The second thing (c:

the reason to have it like a 8, instead of an oval, is so that the balls can overlap some but still stay separate. Looking at it from the top, you would have a sort of zig zag pattern, with the balls in one tube falling into the space in between the balls in the other tube. I did this little quick drawing for an example ...



In real life the balls would be much closer together, so that you could theoretically have double the capacity in the same length of tubing. It would probably be a little less in practice.