Questions about: Noise, Barrels and Porting

[famousgamer]

Im in Canada. A paintball silencer aint a firearm silencer here... or in most other countries besides America for that matter.

[REDRT]

The BATF has historically confiscated BOA Concealers and has labeled them as Firearm Suppressors.

That doesn't suprise me! I guess if I find another one I better pick it up. Now I can put the BATF right up there with the IRS as being .

[REDRT]

Im in Canada. A paintball silencer aint a firearm silencer here... or in most other countries besides America for that matter.

I guess Canada isn't all that bad after all. Silencers and good beer.

[Mescalito]

I always thought a real "MUFFLER" used a baffling system... why not get yourself a bunch of coreggated cardboard and make youself a bunch of doughnuts. make em just big enough to fit around the barrel snugly. and put cuts, holes or some other type of vent to allow air to go up one vien and down the next and so on. i belive the whole idea in a muffler is bassed on making the sound waves travel further before they reach your ear... just stuffing crap down a pvc pipe wont make it travel further... I personally dont have the time to devote to XACTO'ing a bunch of cardboard doughnuts to test my theory, but id bet my mag that if i did it would be a lot quieter than any muffler around...

[REDRT]

A silensor diverts and disperses the gas from leaving the end of the barrel. In a firearm the noise you here is the gasses escaping as the bullet leaves the barrel. The silencer contains and slows down them gasses making it quieter. The more efficant it is doing that the quieter it will be.

[ThePixelGuru]

I don't think much noise comes out of the porting. Unless I'm mistaken, most of the barrel noise from the pop the ball makes when exiting the moving air column in the barrel and entering the still air mass outside. The porting helps reduce this to some degree.

I Googled paintball silencers and checked around a bit, and one site said unported barrels with over-the-muzzle surpressors are quieter than ported barrels with surpressors. I wouldn't think this is true, but he's made a silencer and I haven't.

Best of luck, and post a new topic when you get it down, show us all how it's done.

[Mescalito]

sound travels in waves. disrupt the natural progresion of those airwaves and you disrupt the sound... make it travel further...

did i mention i make ammunition for the gorvernment? lol

[Jotsy]

with the exception of a few guns, real silencers rarely sound as quiet as they do in the movies. you can probably muffle the sound a bit but you wont get that hollywood like "pffft" kind of quiet.

remember, sound doesn't just come from the barrel. if you have a real thin body like a ULE the sound will prob escape from the vibrations from around the bolt area too.

[ThePixelGuru]

with the exception of a few guns, real silencers rarely sound as quiet as they do in the movies. you can probably muffle the sound a bit but you wont get that hollywood like "pffft" kind of quiet.

remember, sound doesn't just come from the barrel. if you have a real thin body like a ULE the sound will prob escape from the vibrations from around the bolt area too.

Well, we happen to be in luck, being 'mag users. It's hard to design a more sealed-off marker. With a really good surpressor, you could probably eliminate the barrel noise so you'd only hear distinctive Automag "ping" and the ball whizzing through the air. Just have to figure out how to make a good one.

[Jotsy]

there's also a great big gaping 0.68" hole on the end of the barrel that you can't really do anything about . it'd be like trying to put a silencer on a shotgun.

un~less...... you use a really really long barrel thats suppressed all the way from the base to the muzzle. in theory, by the time the ball reaches the end, the pressure difference in front and behind the ball should be lower and therefore there'd be less "pop"... but then the velocity or efficiency would probably suffer.

[disclaimer]this is all my own theory tho and i make no claim to be an expert on the subject[/disclaimer]

[VFX_Fenix]

there's also a great big gaping 0.68" hole on the end of the barrel that you can't really do anything about . it'd be like trying to put a silencer on a shotgun.

The bore of the weapon itself is marginally irrelivant. Suppressors work by removing the noise of the expanding gasses being used to propell the projectile.

Placing an "end of muzzle" can on the nose of a ported barrel would be less effective than an unported barrel with a similar can because the porting before the can is allowing the gasses behind the ball to escape in an uncontrolled manner.

A ported barrel would be better served by a style of can that would wover the porting and possibly extand past the muzzle of the barrel.

In all cases of devices which use expanding gasses to project an object there are three principle sources of noise.

1) Action - Nothing to be done here, but the mechanical bits of the gun do make noise though they're rarely ever heard over the report of the weapon.

2) Expanding Gasses - This is where cans (silencers) come in, they provide an area for gasses to expand and cool/warm in a controlled manner before they exit the barrel. This does however mean that any projectile passing through a can will lose some muzzle velocity.

3) Projectile Noise - Namely the projectile traveling at hyper-sonic speeds which has a distinctive "crack". Since this isn't a problem for paintball applications, it's hardly worth noting.

So, of those three, paintball guns have to deal with two and one of them you can't do a thing about.

No matter how noisy you think a gun might be, shooting it without air will tell you how quiet it can be. Firearms (pistols and rifles) aren't particularly well insulated to keep sound from escaping them, however, it is possible for most pistols to be equipped with cans that will make the action the only (and I mean only) audible sound, that and the brass hitting the floor. However cans which are capable of performing in this manner also generally have very, and I mean very limited service life before their performance starts to drop off (to the tune of less than 6 shots).

EDIT: I should still note that Silencers are quite illegal without filling out the propper paperwork OR making them perminently fixed to anything besides a firearm.

[REDRT]

3) Projectile Noise - Namely the projectile traveling at hyper-sonic speeds which has a distinctive "crack". Since this isn't a problem for paintball applications, it's hardly worth noting.

Have you ever had a bullet fly just over your head? The projectile doesn't make a distinctive crack . More like a wisper. The crack is the gasses violently escaping for behide the projectile exiting the the barrel. Accually a paintball flying just past your head has more noise because of it's size causing more drag than a bullet like a .223 flying at speeds over 2000fps.

[VFX_Fenix]

Never had a bullet fly over my head, per se. However a hypersonic projectile does make a lot of noise compaired to a sub-sonic projectile.

There's a reason the Concord Jet is only allowed to travel at its cruising velocity over open water and unpopulated areas.

Trust me on this one. This is why Silcencers are supposed to be fired with sub-sonic ammo unless the can is specifically designed to handle hypersonic rounds.

Case in point. MP5-SD, the integrated silencer on this firearm is designed to take 9mm Para +P ammo (hyper sonic) and reduce the bullet veolcity to subsonic before it leaves the weapon, standard ammo (9mm Para) is not supposed to be fired from this weapon for this reason.

This is the same reason that suppressed .223 Rem firearms are still damn loud just because of the noise the bullet makes and not the escaping gasses.

Another case in point. Ever hear a whip crack? That is a sonic boom, and bullets make those when they travel faster than sound.

[REDRT]

Never had a bullet fly over my head, per se. However a hypersonic projectile does make a lot of noise compaired to a sub-sonic projectile.

There's a reason the Concord Jet is only allowed to travel at its cruising velocity over open water and unpopulated areas.

Trust me on this one. This is why Silcencers are supposed to be fired with sub-sonic ammo unless the can is specifically designed to handle hypersonic rounds.

Case in point. MP5-SD, the integrated silencer on this firearm is designed to take 9mm Para +P ammo (hyper sonic) and reduce the bullet veolcity to subsonic before it leaves the weapon, standard ammo (9mm Para) is not supposed to be fired from this weapon for this reason.

This is the same reason that suppressed .223 Rem firearms are still damn loud just because of the noise the bullet makes and not the escaping gasses.

Another case in point. Ever hear a whip crack? That is a sonic boom, and bullets make those when they travel faster than sound.

Get real. So I guess you would say it's the super sonic pop of the "cork" leaving the champaign bottle.
So it isn't the 12000-15000 psi of chamber pressure behind the .223 .62gr bullet that makes the noise.
If your ever have the oppertunity to have bullets fly over your head. You will hear just wispers, little sweat somethings. Not cracks, booms or anything like that. At a distance of a few hundred yards. Because the bullet will be threre long before the noise from the explosion of the gases. They cut through the air like a knife and do not create sonic booms like a jet. They could due to the speed if they displaced the amount of air that a jet does, but they don't. The noise you here is the gasses escaping when the bullet leaves the barrel. You are correct though. Sub sonic rounds like from a small cal pistol are easier to silence. That is because of their smaller chamber pressures and less gas.

[OneEyedPimp]

Well, you should be more specific - since down here, the ATF has said to 99.9% of silencers for paintball.

Those in power are only granted that privilege by those that follow them.