First, check that the bags are sealed. Paintballs suck up water like a fish, so any holes in the
bags are going to allow the balls in there to get spongy.
Next, look for broken balls � fill in the bag. You�re paying for 2000 USABLE balls,
and broken ones can�t be used. (If you find one of these, most reputable stores will offer
to swap the bag of broken paint, swap the case for another one or lower your price.)
There�s a trick here though. Some paint (usually lower grades) sometimes arrives with
mold-release oil/curing oil in the bag. This may look like beads of moisture on the inside of the
bag, paint smears or a puddle of translucent fluid in the bottom of the bag.
If it really is oil and there�s just a small amount of it, no biggie; by the time you get
that paint home, most of it will have been absorbed into the shells of the balls and will not
affect performance. A huge puddle of it � I�d want to swap the bag, but other people
aren�t bothered by it � your choice.
But how do you tell oil from fill? It�s pretty easy, actually. Oil is translucent (you can
see through it) and, when you rub it around in the bag, it beads (makes small droplets). Fill, on
the other hand, is opaque (you can�t see through it) and when rubbed, it smears.
Next, check for dimples and flats. Dimples are cavities or craters in the shell. Flats are
usually found at the bottom of the bag of balls � the balls that were resting on the box and
being crushed by all of their brothers packed in above them.
More often than not, visual defects such as dimples and flats have little effect on performance
� unless the dimples look like moon craters and the flats are really crushed balls. I
wouldn�t worry about a few of these in a bag of paint � you can pick them out of the
bag and throw then away (for dimples) and you can rotate the box and leave it overnite to eliminate
most, if not all, of the dimples. However, if a good percentage of the balls look like this,
chances are its very old paint and you probably don�t want to buy it. ($10 for the case of
crappy looking paint � sure, no problem�
Next, look for footballs and peas. Footballs or eggs are oblong shaped balls � an error in
manufacturing and quality control. Peas are majorly undersized balls. If you see more than a few
� dump the case � as chances are that the rest of the paint, while it looks okay, is
wildly varying in diameter, which is going to effect your performance.
Finally, look at the seams, the general overall color of the balls and anything else you might see
in there. Seams should be smooth, straight and have no �flash� (little rags of
gelatin hanging on them). They shouldn�t be �weeping� (fill leaking through)
as that is a sign of bad seams.
Color is sometimes an indication of whether you are getting seconds or first run paint
(�muddy� colors can be an indication of re-used gelatin); fading of the shell color
can sometimes tell you that the paint has been sitting for a while � but other times can be
a reaction to sunlight (what was my paint doing in the sun?) or a reaction of the fill dyes to the
gelatin dyes. None of these is necessarily a bad thing, but its good to know when you actually
start shooting the paint.
Last but not least, you can gently pinch a ball or two � but in reality, that�s not
going to tell you much � unless that ball is very, very spongy. A little give is normal and
acceptable, a lot means a rubbery, usually won�t break, probably swollen from moisture, ball.
(Some players mistakenly believe that if they can pinch and break a ball between their fingers, it
will tell them something about the ball. What, I don�t know, unless it�s that they
can get sticky fingers in a unique way. A sphere is one of the strongest structures known to
mankind as stress is naturally spread out over a very large area, and few people can exert enough
force with two fingers to equal the impact of a ball flying at over 200 mph.)
Which leads to �drop tests�, another mistaken belief on the part of players. Pro
players will often be seen grabbing a handful of balls and then dropping them from head-height onto
a hard surface and then looking to see how many balls broke on the first hit and how many broke on
subsequent bounces. While it is true that very brittle balls will usually break easily under this
test, it really tells very little about the ball�s performance on the field. The surface
its dropped onto affects results, the height affects results, the spot on the ball hitting affects
things and, all-in-all, it�s a non-scientific measure of a ball�s potential
performance. Use a drop test if it makes you happy, but don�t rely on it to reveal a whole
heck of a lot about performance out of the gun.
So, now you�ve gotten your paint at a decent price and its time to hit the field. Whoa,
hang on a second there. Where is your paint? How are you storing it?
Paint is supposed to be stored at temperatures between 55 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit; its supposed
to be stored at 50% humidity and out of direct sunlight and
You�re supposed to rotate the damn box on a regular basis. Remember the flats we talked
about? Once you get that case of paint, if it was stored upright in the store, flip it upside
down, right away.
Throwing paint into the back of the car and letting it sit there overnite is a bad idea. Sticking
it in the closet with the moldy pile of socks isn�t good either (biological action is
probably heating those socks up to near combustion temperatures�). If the paint is in your
car, cover it up with something. If it�s a hot day, turn on the AC; if its really hot,
stick the case (or better yet, the bags of paint) under the AC vent. If it�s cold, turn on
the heater. Use the vent again if necessary.
When you get to the field � find a good spot to store your paint, out of the sun, under
cover. If its really cold or really hot, leave it in the car with the appropriate environmental
controls running.
Once you open the box � don�t open all of the bags at once. Anything left open in
the staging area is going to be sucking up moisture while you�re playing. Sure, its fun for
both you and the paint (paint LOOOOVES water) but you�re going to pay the price later on
during the day.
If you are going to purchase multiple cases at the game or field and won�t be using it all
at once � ONLY PURCHASE ENOUGH TO COVER YOUR IMMEDIATE NEEDS. Let the field or event store
the paint under proper conditions for you.
DO NOT leave paint sitting in your hopper or tubes between games. If you stick your gun or pack in
the sun, guess what? Your paint is BAKING.
If you�re camping out over nite at the big scenario game � don�t store your
paint in the tent in opened bags, pods or hoppers. There�s a little thing called DEW that
happens every morning and dew is WATER, which your balls will happily lap up like a wino with a
case of muscatel. Put the paint in the car. Don�t use the balls in the opened bags.
Now, when it comes to guns, the first rule for paintballs is � �its never the
gun�s fault, its always the paint�s fault�. Even in the face of everyone else
using the same marker and having excellent results from their paint, YOUR gun is fine, you must
have gotten bad paint.
Let me clue you in on something; lean closer, I don�t want anyone else to hear: most times
it�s actually the gun, the shooter or the weather; it�s hardly ever the paint.
Paintball guns have a large variety of different methods for accelerating a ball from a standing
start to 300 FPS in a little under 8 inches of travel; that�s like accelerating your car
from 0 to 60 in less than one rotation of your tires, and, no matter how you slice it,
that�s pretty darn rough. Astronauts don�t experience those kinds of forces �
but then again, astronauts are not paintballs, so that�s a relatively pointless analogy.
The point here is that paintball guns do some pretty tortuous things to paintballs and we really
ought to be wondering how we get a few intact ones out the end of the barrel, rather than trying to
figure out why one or two break in there.
Guns do not all work in the same way (duh), but the critical issue here, for paintball performance,
is how your gun imparts energy to the ball. Some guns use lots of volume and very low pressure.
Others use little volume and very high pressure, and still others lie somewhere in-between.
High pressure, low volume markers do not like brittle paintballs. Low pressure, high volume
markers do their best with brittle paint.
So, if you are shooting a lower-end marker (the vast majority of which are High-pressure,
low-volume markers), you�ll be wanting to look for a ball that has a pretty thick shell on
it. If you try and put that ultra-brittle paint through one of these markers, its going to be
splooge city out on the field.