Tumbling Paintballs...and Me

[NewMagMan21]

Well... Im sure this has been tried before... but anyway... I got a case of paintballs down at my local store... When I opened up my bags to fill my pods I noticed that neary all of the paintballs were severly misshapen. (Well not severly but there were alotta dimples, flats spots ect)

Anyway this isnt the first time this has happened to me in my paintball career... I had found out on acciden that if you leave paintballs out on like a towell or something/someplace dry they can reform better (kind of round out) not to a perfect circle but they get better.... But unfortunatley this can take like a day.... a day I do not have... So I decided to think on what could help my paintballs round out better...A rock tumbler...

So I decided to tumble my paintballs knowing that, thats a tumbler's job.. round things out/ make them smooth... So I said what the heck... I threw about 300 of em in there and let them spin for an hour...

The result...It worked! again t the paint is PERFECT.... but it took out many dimples and flat spots...I was left with much rounder paint... I saw probably a %40-%60 difference...

Now I do not believe that all paint is eligable for this operation... only really in bad-extremly bad paint could be used... otherwise you wont see much of a difference at all...

If this helps anyone then my job is done... If not oh well I just wasted 10 mins typing...
But I will say these are my beliefs... not everyone will have the same expperience as I did or some will just say Im carzy

[FallNAngel]

About the worst paint I've seen was a box of Stingers... worst. paint. ever. Most had *huge* flat sides and resembled squares more than spheres. Had I not opened 2 bags before realizing the problem, I would've just taken the case back. Glad it worked out.

[Duzzy]

It is a good idea, but how many paintballers have rock tumblers? I guess I could try sticking them in the dryer on no heat....

[NewMagMan21]

Well.....Its not that your a paintballer with a rock tumbler...you could just be someone that plays paintball...rec/rogue....but like traveling paintballers/ teams...a tumbler probably wont be in their gear case

[paintballr87]

About the worst paint I've seen was a box of Stingers... worst. paint. ever. Most had *huge* flat sides and resembled squares more than spheres. Had I not opened 2 bags before realizing the problem, I would've just taken the case back. Glad it worked out.

YES
me and my freidns went up to a new feild and thats what they had for paint, all of our bags of paint had massive dimples, I just took a pic of my left overs from that day ( I went just this week) The pics are of the best ones from the the one pod I have left
The paint didnt seem to shoot to bad of the feild though, but out wit a bit of target practice at my house I was getting about a 2' grouping with either on of my mags





I tell ya, zap and brass egal paint may be considerd bad, but atleast its round ( from my experiance)

[minimag03]

^^^ ^^^

I wouldn't have paid money for those things.

[sabrefanpc]

it doesnt like rub off the shell or make it brittle or anything?

[maglover728]

Hell no, you turn around and get your money back. Those are unsat!

[NewMagMan21]

OMG my paint wasnt even (well its was close to) half as bad as those...I dont think tumbling would help those...

[Magaman]

YES
me and my freidns went up to a new feild and thats what they had for paint, all of our bags of paint had massive dimples, I just took a pic of my left overs from that day ( I went just this week) The pics are of the best ones from the the one pod I have left
The paint didnt seem to shoot to bad of the feild though, but out wit a bit of target practice at my house I was getting about a 2' grouping with either on of my mags





I tell ya, zap and brass egal paint may be considerd bad, but atleast its round ( from my experiance)

[Muzikman]

Tumblng paint is a very old idea. When I started playing people use to make tumblers out of 5 gallon buckets. To this day i still roll my paint in their bags for about 5 mins before using it.

[Pyrate Jim]

Gawd, the things that come back to haunt you.
We were tumbling paint back in the eighties. The oil-based stuff would look as bad as those pics but rolling it in a coffee can would make a big difference. The problem was settling of the paint. As it sat in the tube on a shelf the heavier pigmants would settle inside the paintball and would cause the ball to be lop-sided. If the ball was heavier on one side(due to settled paint) it would fly all over the place. Rolling or tumbling would shake up the fill so it would be more consistant inside the ball.
Another trick was to roll the balls between two sheets of plywood to press down the high spots. Worked O.K. for a couple ten rnd tubes at a time but I wouldn't try it for an amount that todays hoppers can hold.

It's less of a problem with todays paint, since it doesn't generally sit on a shelf all that long. But you can get bad paint sometimes

[paintballr87]

Im glad everyone likes my paint

I wanted moeny back, but all of the cases of the same brand of paint where like that, and that place does sell alot of paint. so I dont know it was so bad I saw about 6 cases of the stuff and all where like that, I know it was only the stingers to, I saw a bunch of other paint and it was fine, and that includeing stuff like zapp primer.

[Skoad]

i thought of putting paint in some kind of tumbler to keep it from settleing over time, didn't think it would help round it out though.

[ascetic1]

Hey, i dont know if this applies to everyone but i got a box of stingers the other day..i just went cheap for rec... they were not dented at all, if i can get some pics on here i will try, but they shot fine for me...