ElvinWarrior
Member
I have this really bizzare idea rattling around in my head... And I want to bounce it off of a few other heads in this forum to see what the reaction is...
Paint ball guns are apparently alot of fun for alot of people... But, I hardly ever see any BP enthusiasts showing any interest in this passtime, which, with all the games and scenarios they come up with, can be, alot of fun... Apparently. Any of our members who have kids old enough to handle a paint ball fight, might find this idea a bit of fun as well...
Why so few... BP paintballers????
Well, probably, it's because... ummm.... We like BP guns, NOT fully automatic gas powered overpriced toys, that slam paint balls all over your clothes, and sometimes, really can sting and give you a hell of a welt...
And... the sport is biased towards modern guns... Paint Ball guns that look, feel, actually work like, semi automatic and fully automatic modern or at least WWII era guns.
There are no BP paint ball guns.... Right??? Ever heard of one??? I never have...
Before we get into this discussion too far... Before anyone calls the ATF or the OHS on me butt... Before you radical liberals call the fire chief on me... Allow me to point out... A) Air rifles have more power and more destructive force that paintballs do... B) ALL firearms represent a potential fire hazard, even modern smokeless guns can start a brush fire... C) If I took one of my actual for real BP reproduction guns, say a 50 Cal fllintlock... loaded it with 5gr of black powder, a waxed cork wad on top of the powder, a paintball on top of that... That would be called, a blank load, in a real gun... SO... don't NOBODY go ballistic on me for suggesting that one of the prop guns, some of which can FIRE from the factory, is in violation of some kind of law by converting it to fire paint balls... NONESENSE !!!
Butt......
There are tons of stage/prop guns that can fire a paint ball, with a little clever manipulation on the part of the BP enthusiast... Some of them only cost a little, like re-enactment flintlock pistols, whose mechanisms cock, whose hammers strike, whose hammer jaws hold a flint and spark... But.. they say ALL OVER the place, wherever you see these guns offered for sale..
"Non-Firing Guns... Cannot fire real ammunition... Cannot be made to fire real ammunition...."
Butt.....
3 grains of Black Powder, ignited in the barrel of the re-enactment prop gun... firing a lightweight paint ball out.... Is NOT a full load of real ammunition is it???... And I doubt, very, very much, that the barrels of these guns would explode or be any danger to anyone, at 3 grains of black powder per charge...
Some of these paint ball guns out there, cost nearly as much as the real thing, they are very expensive toys, and work, and feel like, and look like, the actual real gun as well... But... they aren't firing real ammunition either, they pop out the paint balls using compressed carbon dioxide as the propellant, and in some models, these guys run around with battary powered mini air compressors strapped to their hips or backs, and the compressed air is the source of propellant...
I did some reasearch... on the paint balls themselves... interesting stuff paint balls... They come in the following round ball calibers...
.40 Caliber Paint Balls
.43 Caliber Paint Balls
.50 Caliber Paint Balls
.68 Caliber Paint Balls
Hmmm.... Somehow... those callibers look alot like early American flintlock and percussion calibers... Is this a co-incidence or what?
The .40 caliber ball, could be rammed down a .40 caliber prop gun barrel, either pistol or musket, without a patch... just dab in a small amount of crisco grease in the barrel, as a lube, stuff the ball down on top of the very small micro charge of 3 grains of black powder.
Actually... it would go down more like this... measure out the 3 grains of BP, swab the barrel with a patch to remove any execess grease, and douse any embers... pour in the small powder charge...Lean the barrel in the direction of the ignition port, whether flint or percussion, so the small powder charge is in the immeadiate area of the ignition port... Ram down one clean, un-lubbed, cotton ball... to seat the charge against the ignition hole, and prevent the charge from migrating away from the ignition source. Place a dab of crisco grease in the barrel, place the 40 caliber paint ball on the barrel end... use the ramrod to run the paint ball, and lube, down to the cotton swab, and seat the paint ball on the bottom... If the ball goes down a bit too loose, or a bit to easy... I would ram a second cotton ball down on top of the paint ball to ensure it didn't rattle about down there.
Now, prime the gun, either by cap or flint pan charge....
One Loaded, single shot, .40 Caliber paint ball gun ready to go....
The .43 caliber paint ball, would work on a 44 caliber barrel, with a patch on the ball..
The .50 caliber paint ball, no patch, but maybee, one cotton ball rammed down on top to keep the ball down...
The .68 caliber paint ball would work on a 69 caliber barrel, with a patch...
Now, I have never actually ever purchased any kind of a re-enactment non-firing prop gun of any kind ever... I see them online, they look to me, from the photographs like they could fire a paint ball, with a very small charge of powder to propell the ball out...
But... I have no idea what actual caliber, if any, the actual barrel size is on these re-enactment guns... They may need some kind of boring work done to them to make them able to accept a standard paint ball caliber.
And... I am sure there is no ignition port actually set up on the gun... in the case of the flintlocks, a flash hole would need to be drilled down into the breech area of the back end of the barrel.
In the case of percussion ignited BP re-enactment "model" guns... The area where the dummy nipple is, would need to be sawed off, and filed.. an actual ignition hole drilled down into the breech, a larger hole drilled and taped to accept an actual percussion cap nipple...
Re-enactment revolvers... would need even more work, I am sure.
I did some quick, "off the cuff", calculations about bore sizes versus Painball calibers... And I came up with the following two simple charts for re-boring barrels and the cylinders of revolvers...
As we all know... Revolver cylinders and barrels are best set to undersize of the actual ball caliber, since patches are not used on revolvers. For revolvers, I would suggest the following bore diameters for both the cylinders and barrels, so that the paintballs fit very snugly, in fact just a teency undersized, so the balls have to be pressure forced down into the cylinder chambers. These balls are pliable plastic outer shells, filled with a gelled "paint", which is actually not a paint at all, it does wash off. But they are malable enough to be forced into a slightly undersized cylinder chamber. I would also suggest some sort of wadding, in the case of the 40 caliber and 43 caliber paint balls, a standard lubbed or unlubbed 44 Caliber ball pad would be very helpfull to protect it from the heat and flame of the propellant charge. I would also suggest, lubbing the top of the balls, once seated into the cylinders, with cheap crisco vegitable cooking grease. I wouldn't waste my very expensive barrel butter or bear grease on a paintball !!! So, here is my suggested boring diameters for re-boring the cylinders and barrels of REVOLVER re-enactment stage/prop guns to re-work them into FIRING Paintball guns.
0.40 Caliber........................ 3/8"
0.43 Caliber........................ 13/32"
0.50 Caliber........................ 15/32"
0.68 Caliber..........,............. 3/4"
For single shot muzzle loading rifles and pistols, both flintlocks and percussions, no... I am not going to venture out into the land of cartridge guns, if anyone wants to go there, they can go there on there own... Not heading that way with this article.... I suggest the following diameters.
Now... These diameters are a teency bit OVERSIZED, because as we all know, these kinds of guns function best with a patched ball, which works out nicely for these paintballs, since, having a patch on them, would protect them from the heat and flame of the propellant charge. So, here is that suggested diameter chart.
0.40 Caliber Paintball, bored out to 0.42 Caliber............ 13/32"
0.43 Caliber Paintball, bored out to 0.44 Caliber............ 7/16"
0.50 Caliber Paintball, bored out to 0.52 Caliber............ 33/64"
0.68 Caliber Paintball, bored out to 0.70 Caliber............ 5/8"
As you can see, none of these diameters are bizzare weird sizes, some were downsized a tad, some upsized a tad in order to use very commonly available machine drill diameters and boring tools...
Just by looking at the gun designs, the fact that the firing mechanisms and cylinder rotating mechanisms all funtion and work like real BP guns... leads me to believe, with a small amount of clever home gunsmithing, a prop gun, could be transformed from a "Non-Firing" gun... into a BP paint ball re-encactment model, that could handle a very small charge of say 3 grains of BP, to propell the paint ball at its target... safely, with out harm to anyone or damage to the gun as well.
Does anyone else think this could work? Would these little re-enactment BP Paint Ball guns actually work safely after these modifications? Or am I going to blow the damn thing up in the process... hopefully not loosing any of my fingers?
What do you guys think about this idea?
Sincerely,
Elvin Warrior... aka... David
The following few pictures are examples of some of the re-enactment "model" guns that actually have working firing hammers, either flint or percussion, and working flint jaws, that can actually hold a working flint and spark, and working frizzens and frizzen springs, and flash pans...
A little BP in the flash pan and it definately would go "pooofffff !!!"
A few simple modifications to the barrel and breech, and the 3 grain powder charge would go "Bang !!!".... and out comes a flyin your paint ball !!!
In the above pictures I am only showing one percussion re-enactment "model" gun, but they have tons of them, percussion single shot pistols, percussion revolvers, sharps, enfields, zuaves, Any gun you can find online for a real BP gun, you can find a re-enactment "model" gun of, and at greatly reduced prices. For example, an actual real 50 caliber sharps carbine would be around 1,000 to 1,600 for an actual real firing reproduction gun. The same model, in a re-enactment model version, that had a wooden stock, and metal parts, and a metal barrel, and looked, worked, felt like and even weighs the same as a real gun, comes in at between 86 and 150 bux... CHEAP TOYS...
I am confident they can be made to fire paint balls safely, really I think that this could be a really fun passtime and fun hobby for alot of BP enthusiasts out there.
They even have cheap plastic exploding caps for these enactment guns... like the following pics... The first pack is $1.35, the second, $1.89 and the third... a whopping $0.74.... Yes, thats right, 74 cents for a pack of 72 exploding plastic toy cap gun caps made with a percussion explosive powerful enough to ignite a small BP powder charge. Some of my BP contacts on the net, tell me, that these little caps actually fit the standard #11 nipple very snugly and very well, that because they are pliable plastic, they actually seal the nipple from moisture. BUT... sometimes they don't ignite the charge as reliably as the commercial metal caps manufactured for BP use... But, BUT... there is a fix for that, snip open a second cap, carefully pry out the charge pancake, place the charge pancake inside one of the other caps, to double the ignitor charge, seal with either a puff of cheap clear hair spray, or... a thin dab of either cheap clear laquer fingernail polish, or if you prefer, the clear red laquer... Allow to dry... and VIOLA, Reliable, SURE FIRE, ever-ready CHEAP percussion caps that actually fit SNUGLY on the #11 Nipple !!!
Latterz Guys...
I am Looking forward to our first BP Paint Ball shoot-em-up-bang-bang-game !!! I will be the guy with the blunderbuss, and a brace of 4 flintlock pirate pistols, wearing my spanish conquestadore helmet (Brass) and breastplate...
Sincerely,
ElvinWarrior... aka... David
Paint ball guns are apparently alot of fun for alot of people... But, I hardly ever see any BP enthusiasts showing any interest in this passtime, which, with all the games and scenarios they come up with, can be, alot of fun... Apparently. Any of our members who have kids old enough to handle a paint ball fight, might find this idea a bit of fun as well...
Why so few... BP paintballers????
Well, probably, it's because... ummm.... We like BP guns, NOT fully automatic gas powered overpriced toys, that slam paint balls all over your clothes, and sometimes, really can sting and give you a hell of a welt...
And... the sport is biased towards modern guns... Paint Ball guns that look, feel, actually work like, semi automatic and fully automatic modern or at least WWII era guns.
There are no BP paint ball guns.... Right??? Ever heard of one??? I never have...
Before we get into this discussion too far... Before anyone calls the ATF or the OHS on me butt... Before you radical liberals call the fire chief on me... Allow me to point out... A) Air rifles have more power and more destructive force that paintballs do... B) ALL firearms represent a potential fire hazard, even modern smokeless guns can start a brush fire... C) If I took one of my actual for real BP reproduction guns, say a 50 Cal fllintlock... loaded it with 5gr of black powder, a waxed cork wad on top of the powder, a paintball on top of that... That would be called, a blank load, in a real gun... SO... don't NOBODY go ballistic on me for suggesting that one of the prop guns, some of which can FIRE from the factory, is in violation of some kind of law by converting it to fire paint balls... NONESENSE !!!
Butt......
There are tons of stage/prop guns that can fire a paint ball, with a little clever manipulation on the part of the BP enthusiast... Some of them only cost a little, like re-enactment flintlock pistols, whose mechanisms cock, whose hammers strike, whose hammer jaws hold a flint and spark... But.. they say ALL OVER the place, wherever you see these guns offered for sale..
"Non-Firing Guns... Cannot fire real ammunition... Cannot be made to fire real ammunition...."
Butt.....
3 grains of Black Powder, ignited in the barrel of the re-enactment prop gun... firing a lightweight paint ball out.... Is NOT a full load of real ammunition is it???... And I doubt, very, very much, that the barrels of these guns would explode or be any danger to anyone, at 3 grains of black powder per charge...
Some of these paint ball guns out there, cost nearly as much as the real thing, they are very expensive toys, and work, and feel like, and look like, the actual real gun as well... But... they aren't firing real ammunition either, they pop out the paint balls using compressed carbon dioxide as the propellant, and in some models, these guys run around with battary powered mini air compressors strapped to their hips or backs, and the compressed air is the source of propellant...
I did some reasearch... on the paint balls themselves... interesting stuff paint balls... They come in the following round ball calibers...
.40 Caliber Paint Balls
.43 Caliber Paint Balls
.50 Caliber Paint Balls
.68 Caliber Paint Balls
Hmmm.... Somehow... those callibers look alot like early American flintlock and percussion calibers... Is this a co-incidence or what?
The .40 caliber ball, could be rammed down a .40 caliber prop gun barrel, either pistol or musket, without a patch... just dab in a small amount of crisco grease in the barrel, as a lube, stuff the ball down on top of the very small micro charge of 3 grains of black powder.
Actually... it would go down more like this... measure out the 3 grains of BP, swab the barrel with a patch to remove any execess grease, and douse any embers... pour in the small powder charge...Lean the barrel in the direction of the ignition port, whether flint or percussion, so the small powder charge is in the immeadiate area of the ignition port... Ram down one clean, un-lubbed, cotton ball... to seat the charge against the ignition hole, and prevent the charge from migrating away from the ignition source. Place a dab of crisco grease in the barrel, place the 40 caliber paint ball on the barrel end... use the ramrod to run the paint ball, and lube, down to the cotton swab, and seat the paint ball on the bottom... If the ball goes down a bit too loose, or a bit to easy... I would ram a second cotton ball down on top of the paint ball to ensure it didn't rattle about down there.
Now, prime the gun, either by cap or flint pan charge....
One Loaded, single shot, .40 Caliber paint ball gun ready to go....
The .43 caliber paint ball, would work on a 44 caliber barrel, with a patch on the ball..
The .50 caliber paint ball, no patch, but maybee, one cotton ball rammed down on top to keep the ball down...
The .68 caliber paint ball would work on a 69 caliber barrel, with a patch...
Now, I have never actually ever purchased any kind of a re-enactment non-firing prop gun of any kind ever... I see them online, they look to me, from the photographs like they could fire a paint ball, with a very small charge of powder to propell the ball out...
But... I have no idea what actual caliber, if any, the actual barrel size is on these re-enactment guns... They may need some kind of boring work done to them to make them able to accept a standard paint ball caliber.
And... I am sure there is no ignition port actually set up on the gun... in the case of the flintlocks, a flash hole would need to be drilled down into the breech area of the back end of the barrel.
In the case of percussion ignited BP re-enactment "model" guns... The area where the dummy nipple is, would need to be sawed off, and filed.. an actual ignition hole drilled down into the breech, a larger hole drilled and taped to accept an actual percussion cap nipple...
Re-enactment revolvers... would need even more work, I am sure.
I did some quick, "off the cuff", calculations about bore sizes versus Painball calibers... And I came up with the following two simple charts for re-boring barrels and the cylinders of revolvers...
As we all know... Revolver cylinders and barrels are best set to undersize of the actual ball caliber, since patches are not used on revolvers. For revolvers, I would suggest the following bore diameters for both the cylinders and barrels, so that the paintballs fit very snugly, in fact just a teency undersized, so the balls have to be pressure forced down into the cylinder chambers. These balls are pliable plastic outer shells, filled with a gelled "paint", which is actually not a paint at all, it does wash off. But they are malable enough to be forced into a slightly undersized cylinder chamber. I would also suggest some sort of wadding, in the case of the 40 caliber and 43 caliber paint balls, a standard lubbed or unlubbed 44 Caliber ball pad would be very helpfull to protect it from the heat and flame of the propellant charge. I would also suggest, lubbing the top of the balls, once seated into the cylinders, with cheap crisco vegitable cooking grease. I wouldn't waste my very expensive barrel butter or bear grease on a paintball !!! So, here is my suggested boring diameters for re-boring the cylinders and barrels of REVOLVER re-enactment stage/prop guns to re-work them into FIRING Paintball guns.
0.40 Caliber........................ 3/8"
0.43 Caliber........................ 13/32"
0.50 Caliber........................ 15/32"
0.68 Caliber..........,............. 3/4"
For single shot muzzle loading rifles and pistols, both flintlocks and percussions, no... I am not going to venture out into the land of cartridge guns, if anyone wants to go there, they can go there on there own... Not heading that way with this article.... I suggest the following diameters.
Now... These diameters are a teency bit OVERSIZED, because as we all know, these kinds of guns function best with a patched ball, which works out nicely for these paintballs, since, having a patch on them, would protect them from the heat and flame of the propellant charge. So, here is that suggested diameter chart.
0.40 Caliber Paintball, bored out to 0.42 Caliber............ 13/32"
0.43 Caliber Paintball, bored out to 0.44 Caliber............ 7/16"
0.50 Caliber Paintball, bored out to 0.52 Caliber............ 33/64"
0.68 Caliber Paintball, bored out to 0.70 Caliber............ 5/8"
As you can see, none of these diameters are bizzare weird sizes, some were downsized a tad, some upsized a tad in order to use very commonly available machine drill diameters and boring tools...
Just by looking at the gun designs, the fact that the firing mechanisms and cylinder rotating mechanisms all funtion and work like real BP guns... leads me to believe, with a small amount of clever home gunsmithing, a prop gun, could be transformed from a "Non-Firing" gun... into a BP paint ball re-encactment model, that could handle a very small charge of say 3 grains of BP, to propell the paint ball at its target... safely, with out harm to anyone or damage to the gun as well.
Does anyone else think this could work? Would these little re-enactment BP Paint Ball guns actually work safely after these modifications? Or am I going to blow the damn thing up in the process... hopefully not loosing any of my fingers?
What do you guys think about this idea?
Sincerely,
Elvin Warrior... aka... David
The following few pictures are examples of some of the re-enactment "model" guns that actually have working firing hammers, either flint or percussion, and working flint jaws, that can actually hold a working flint and spark, and working frizzens and frizzen springs, and flash pans...
A little BP in the flash pan and it definately would go "pooofffff !!!"
A few simple modifications to the barrel and breech, and the 3 grain powder charge would go "Bang !!!".... and out comes a flyin your paint ball !!!
In the above pictures I am only showing one percussion re-enactment "model" gun, but they have tons of them, percussion single shot pistols, percussion revolvers, sharps, enfields, zuaves, Any gun you can find online for a real BP gun, you can find a re-enactment "model" gun of, and at greatly reduced prices. For example, an actual real 50 caliber sharps carbine would be around 1,000 to 1,600 for an actual real firing reproduction gun. The same model, in a re-enactment model version, that had a wooden stock, and metal parts, and a metal barrel, and looked, worked, felt like and even weighs the same as a real gun, comes in at between 86 and 150 bux... CHEAP TOYS...
I am confident they can be made to fire paint balls safely, really I think that this could be a really fun passtime and fun hobby for alot of BP enthusiasts out there.
They even have cheap plastic exploding caps for these enactment guns... like the following pics... The first pack is $1.35, the second, $1.89 and the third... a whopping $0.74.... Yes, thats right, 74 cents for a pack of 72 exploding plastic toy cap gun caps made with a percussion explosive powerful enough to ignite a small BP powder charge. Some of my BP contacts on the net, tell me, that these little caps actually fit the standard #11 nipple very snugly and very well, that because they are pliable plastic, they actually seal the nipple from moisture. BUT... sometimes they don't ignite the charge as reliably as the commercial metal caps manufactured for BP use... But, BUT... there is a fix for that, snip open a second cap, carefully pry out the charge pancake, place the charge pancake inside one of the other caps, to double the ignitor charge, seal with either a puff of cheap clear hair spray, or... a thin dab of either cheap clear laquer fingernail polish, or if you prefer, the clear red laquer... Allow to dry... and VIOLA, Reliable, SURE FIRE, ever-ready CHEAP percussion caps that actually fit SNUGLY on the #11 Nipple !!!
Latterz Guys...
I am Looking forward to our first BP Paint Ball shoot-em-up-bang-bang-game !!! I will be the guy with the blunderbuss, and a brace of 4 flintlock pirate pistols, wearing my spanish conquestadore helmet (Brass) and breastplate...
Sincerely,
ElvinWarrior... aka... David
Last edited by a moderator: