How to Improve Your Paintball Gun’s Accuracy | 7 Tips to Shoot Better
Paintball is a fun and thrilling sport that can challenge your skills and strategy. However, it can also be very disappointing if you can't hit your target. You might feel like your paintballs are going everywhere except where you want them to go.
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| How to Improve Your Paintball Gun’s Accuracy | 7 Tips to Shoot Better |
So how can you make your paintball gun more accurate?
Well, the first thing you need to know is that the accuracy of your paintball gun depends mostly on the quality of the paintballs you use. If the paintballs are not round and smooth, they will not fly straight. They will wobble and curve in the air, making it hard for you to aim.
Now, if the paintballs are not the problem, then there could be other reasons why your marker is not shooting accurately. It could be that your paintball barrel is not smooth enough, or that your paintballs are too big or too small for your barrel, or maybe there is too much dirt, oil, or paint inside your marker, loader, barrel, or pods and it is affecting your accuracy.
Let's see what the cause is for your accuracy problem below.
Some people think that some paintball guns are more accurate than others. This is not true.
Sure, some paintball guns are more consistent and dependable than others, but no marker is going to be much better in accuracy than any other.
At the end of the day, all paintball guns work in the same way. They use a burst of compressed air (or Co2) to push the paintball out of the barrel. This means that if everything else is the same (i.e. same paintballs, barrel, and air source) then your paintball gun should shoot as accurately as any other paintball gun out there.
And if your paintball gun is not shooting as accurately as it should be, it is probably because of one of the issues listed below. Hopefully, these tips will help you make your paintball gun shoot straighter and get more hits.
1. Use Better Quality Paintballs
The best way to make your paintball gun shoot more accurately is to use better quality paintballs. Now, this doesn't mean you have to use the most expensive paintballs you can find, but I would suggest avoiding the cheapest ones as they are probably going to be low-quality.
The problem with low-quality paintballs is they are often covered in bumps and dents. These flaws will make your paintballs fly unevenly and unpredictably. They might also cause your paintballs to break inside your marker or barrel.
I would also avoid using any old or poorly stored paintballs as they are likely going to be out of shape as well.
2. Use the Right Size Barrel
The next step to making your paintball gun shoot more accurately is to use the right size barrel for your paintballs.
Now, there are a few different ways you can do this. You can either use a smaller barrel than your paintballs, a bigger barrel than your paintballs, or a barrel that matches the size of your paintballs. This is called underboring, overboring, or bore matching. This is where you match the size of your paintballs to the size of your barrel.
Pro Tip: You can find out the size of your barrel by dropping a paintball down your barrel and seeing if it gets stuck. If the paintball gets stuck but can be blown out with a small breath of air then you have matched the size of your paintballs to the size of your barrel. This is called bore matching.
Most players believe that bore matching is the best way to make your paintball gun shoot more accurately, but there has been some debate on whether underboring or overboring is better for optimal accuracy. Underboring is when the barrel is smaller than your paintballs, and overboring is when your barrel is bigger than your paintballs.
3. Use HPA Instead of Co2
Are you still using Co2 to power your paintball gun?
Switching to HPA (High Pressure Air) is a great way to improve your overall accuracy as it provides a much more consistent pressure when compared to Co2. This is because HPA is simply compressed air in a tank, whereas Co2 is a liquid that turns into a gas whenever the marker is fired.
Since HPA is nothing but compressed air, it’s much cleaner and a lot less unstable than Co2. This means it will give you greater consistency and therefore greater accuracy.
4. Upgrade Your Barrel
Depending on which paintball gun you have, upgrading your barrel can either be a big improvement, a small improvement, or not an improvement at all. This is because most paintball guns already come with a good barrel right out of the box. The only exception being beginner paintball markers such as those from Tippmann, Spyder, etc.
You can tell the quality of a paintball barrel by looking at the inside to see if it’s rough or smooth. If the inside of the barrel is as smooth as a baby’s bottom then it’s a good paintball barrel. However, if the inside of the barrel is rough and full of sharp edges and/or metal bits then you can expect a decrease in accuracy and lots of broken paintballs.
These low-quality barrels are often on the short side as well and have a low amount of holes. This means upgrading your barrel will also make your paintball gun quieter and look cooler.
Now, if you have a mid-range to high-end paintball marker then it’s unlikely that upgrading your barrel will lead to a big increase in accuracy. However, if the size of your barrel is a bad match for the size of your paintballs then you’re going to see a decrease in accuracy.
Your only two options are to either buy a one-piece or two-piece barrel with a bigger or smaller size, or to buy a barrel kit with a variety of size options to choose from.
5. Clean Your Paintball Equipment the Right Way
One of the main causes of paintball guns losing their accuracy is not cleaning them properly. When your paintball gun, loader, and barrel are dirty, they can affect the way the paintballs fly out of your marker. You need to clean them regularly to avoid this problem.
To clean your paintball gun, you need to take it apart and wipe away any dirt, oil, or paint that is stuck in the breach. This is where the paintballs enter your marker from the loader. You also need to oil the parts that need lubrication and replace any worn-out O-rings.
You also need to clean your barrel, loader, and pods thoroughly with hot water to get rid of any excess oil that can make your shots less accurate. The best way to clean your barrel is to soak it in hot water with a little bit of dish soap for about 5-10 minutes and then rinse it well with hot water. Then you can dry it with a clean squeegee and it will be ready to use!
To clean your loader, you have to remove the electronic parts from the shell before you can soak it in water. Or you can just wipe it with a damp cloth or paper towel if you prefer.
Pods are easy to clean. Just soak them in hot water and dish soap for 5-10 minutes and then rinse them well.
6. Use a Fresh Squeegee
If your paintballs are not flying straight, you might want to check how you are cleaning your barrel. If you are using a barrel swab (the fuzzy kind of squeegee), you can only use it once or twice before it becomes dirty and spreads more paint and dirt inside your barrel.
And if your barrel is not clean, your shots will not be accurate. That's why you should have some extra barrel swabs and at least one rubber squeegee for those days when your paintballs, barrel, or marker are not working well.
7. Check Your Marker's Performance
The final step to make your paintball gun more accurate is to make sure everything inside your marker is working properly. If you notice that your velocity is changing a lot, you might have a faulty regulator that needs to be fixed or replaced.
Usually, you can tell when something is wrong with your paintball gun. If everything seems fine, then you probably don't have anything to worry about. Just remember to clean your marker regularly, apply grease and oil when needed, and change your O-rings when they wear out.