Since its introduction in the 1980s, paintball has become a
worldwide phenomenon. Enthusiasts have formed teams, set up
leagues and organized game tournaments. Paintball is still a
long way from the popularity of older sports like basketball
or football, but new paintball playing fields and
organizations are popping up all the time.
Photo courtesy WARPIG.com A player at the Mardi Gras Open 2000, a
paintball tournament with hundreds of
participants
The main thing that sets paintball apart from other sports
is the equipment involved: You don't find guns and paint
projectiles in too many traditional sports. In this edition of
HowStuffWorks,
we'll look at this equipment to see what is involved in a
paintball attack. We'll also find out about the basic game of
paintball, as well as some of the other uses of paintball
equipment.
The most
basic piece of paintball equipment is the paintball
itself. Just as in tennis or soccer, the ball is the central
element of a paintball game. But unlike these older games,
paintball has dozens, often hundreds, of "balls" in play at
any one time. As the name implies, these balls are actually
tiny containers of paint.
Paintballs have an incredibly simple construction. They're
actually a lot like gel-cap pills, or bath-oil beads. They
consist of a glob of colored liquid encased in a gelatin
capsule. The "paint," which comes in many colors, is
non-toxic, biodegradable and water soluble (so it will wash
off skin and clothing).
Basically, a paintball is like a small water balloon,
weighing only a few grams and measuring only 0.68 inches (1.7
cm) in diameter. The capsule holds up if you handle it or drop
it from a short distance. When you shoot a paintball from a
gun, however, it bursts on impact and leaves a 6-inch (13-cm)
splatter of paint.
The job of the paintball gun, sometimes called a
marker, is to get the paintball moving at a high rate
of speed. In the basic gun, the propulsion system is
compressed gas. This gas, which can be compressed
carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen
(N2) or ordinary air, is
stored in small cartridges or larger tanks that can be
attached to the gun. The gun is also attached to a
hopper, which holds the paintballs.
Photo courtesy WARPIG.com Modern paintball guns come in all shapes and
sizes, in both rifle and pistol
designs.
Different guns have different firing systems, but the basic
idea in all of them is the same. The gun is cocked in some way
so that a paintball can fall out of the hopper and enter the
gun's barrel. Then a small burst of compressed gas is released
into the barrel, just behind the paintball. The compressed gas
pushes the paintball from behind with much greater force than
the air on the other side of the paintball, so the paintball
is propelled forward.
In order to make the game safe, the power of paintball guns
is strictly regulated. Guns in play are adjusted so that the
top speed of the fired paintball is 300 feet (91 m) per
second. A paintball moving at this speed is unlikely to cause
serious injury if it hits your skin, though it will sting and
may leave a bruise. Also, since wind resistance starts slowing
the paintball down as soon as it leaves the gun, it has a
reduced impact when fired from a greater distance. Speeding
paintballs can cause serious injury to the eyes or ears, so
paintball players always wear head protection.
The relatively slow projectile speed significantly limits
the range of paintball fire: The paintball will fall to
the ground in a much shorter distance than a faster
projectile, such as a bullet. For this reason, firing a
paintball gun is a sort of hybrid between firing a gun and
throwing a ball. To hit somebody at a distance, the shooter
has to tilt the gun up a little bit, so the paintball flies up
in the air in an arc, like a football,
and comes down on the target.
There are a variety of gun designs on the market, each with
a slightly different system, but they are all based on the
same principles. In the next section, we'll find out how guns
generally work by examining the specific mechanism in a basic
"pump" gun, a design that dominated paintball in the game's
early days.
The Way of the Gun In the last section, we
saw that paintball guns propel paintballs with a quick burst
of compressed gas. In the animation below, you can see how
this process occurs in a conventional pump-action gun.
In the middle of the gun, there is a long valve
tube. This runs from the barrel, where the
paintballs are loaded, to a chamber at the back of the
gun, where the gas cartridge is connected. Along this
path, the tube passes through the bolt, a
spring, the hammer and, at the gas-intake end of
the gun, the valve seat. At the barrel end of the gun,
the tube is always open. But the openings at the other end,
which are positioned along the sides of the tube, are blocked
off by the surrounding valve seat. The tube is held in
position by a cup seal, pushed against the tube by a
small spring and the pressure of the gas in the chamber.
When the gun
isn't cocked, the bolt extends into the barrel,
blocking the entryway for the paintballs. To cock the gun, the
shooter pulls the bolt backward, pushing against the spring so
that the bolt butts up against the hammer. This motion does
two things:
As the bolt slides back, the ammunition intake opens,
and a paintball can fall into the barrel.
On the bottom of the hammer, there is a small
spring-loaded latch called a sear. The sear, which
pivots on a tiny pin, catches hold of the bolt when the bolt
is pushed against the hammer. In this way, the sear binds
the bolt and hammer together so they move as one unit.
After pulling the bolt back, the shooter pushes it (along
with the hammer) forward. To fire the gun, the shooter pulls
the trigger. The trigger pushes up against the back end
of the sear, so the front end moves down. This releases the
hammer from the bolt, and the spring rapidly propels the
hammer backward. As the hammer moves backward, it pushes on a
raised lip around the valve tube. This propels the valve tube
backward with a burst of force that is greater than the
forward force exerted by the rear spring and gas pressure. The
valve tube is pushed back for an instant until the spring
pushes it back into place. In this instant, the side openings
on the tube are exposed, and the pressurized gas can flow
through to the barrel. This burst of gas is strong enough to
propel the paintball forward at a good rate of speed.
Photo courtesy WARPIG.com Players lie in wait for members of the rival
team. Winning in paintball requires a combination of
weapons skill and strategic
planning.
In autococker paintball guns, an adjustable valve
automatically diverts compressed gas to the front of the gun
after it is fired. This gas serves to push the bolt back
again, so the gun recocks. This way, the shooter doesn't have
to recock the gun with every shot. Automatic guns use
the compressed air, or in some cases an electric
motor, to continually recock and fire the gun as long as
the trigger is held down. To find out more about these sorts
of guns, check out this
site.
As paintball has evolved, the equipment has become more and
more sophisticated. In the next section, we'll look at the
history of paintball to find out when and why the game was
invented. We'll also look at how the game is played and at
other uses of paintball equipment.
It's All Fun and Games... Originally,
paintball guns weren't intended for sport. The first guns were
developed in the 1970s for use in forestry and agriculture.
Foresters used the guns to mark certain trees (for research,
planning trails). The guns were also used by farmers to mark
cattle.
At some point, it occurred to a few foresters or farmers to
shoot the guns at each other, and the game of paintball was
born. But things didn't really get going until 1981, when a
group of 12 weekend warriors got ahold of some forester guns
and used them to play a grown-up version of "capture the
flag."
Photo courtesy WARPIG.com Paintball is usually played as a team sport.
Rival teams attempt to capture the other team's flag,
while defending their
own.
In this game, which is still the predominant paintball
activity, two teams try to find and steal the other's flag
while protecting their own flag from capture. Players are
"out" of the game when they get hit with a paintball, and the
referee decrees that they are down. Referees are also there to
make sure nobody makes physical contact with another
player: This is one of the most important rules. A paintball
game typically lasts from 15 to 40 minutes, but players may
play for six hours or more at a stretch. You can hold a
paintball game with only a few people on each team, or with
hundreds of people on each team. To find out about other
variations on the game of paintball, check out this
site.
The original 12 paintball enthusiasts had a lot to do with
launching the sport. Soon after their first game, they bought
up hundreds of tree-marking guns from the manufacturer (a
company called Nelson) and began selling them to the
general public. The idea caught on pretty quickly, and in
1982, the first paintball field opened in Rochester, New York.
There are now paintball fields, as well as indoor paintball
arenas, all over the world.
One of the most important developments in the history of
paintball has been safety equipment. When a paintball
hits you on the body, you feel a brief sting. But a paintball
round in the eye could actually "knock your eye out." In the
early days, many players wore no eye protection at all, and
others wore only basic safety goggles. These days, paintball
players usually wear full face masks and helmets. This
protects them from damage to the eyes, ears, nose and mouth.
Just as in football and hockey, safety
equipment is absolutely necessary in paintball.
Photo courtesy WARPIG.com Paintball players always wear face and head
protection to prevent serious eye and ear
injuries.
In addition to recreational use, paintball has become a
part of military and police training. In terms of feel and
handling, a paintball gun has little in common with an actual
firearm, but paintball is still good training for combat
situations. Mainly, it lets soldiers and police practice
strategy, camouflage
and the fine art of not getting shot.
To find out more about military paintball use, as well as
paintball games, organizations and equipment, check out the
links on the next page. The proliferation of paintball Web
sites is strong evidence that the sport is still on the rise.
And the enthusiasm and ingenuity of the amateur gun-designers
who are showing their work on the Web bodes well for the
continued evolution of the equipment and the game of paintball
itself.
