Design - The typical barrel of a paintball gun is made up of three major parts - the threading, the barrel shaft, and the porting. Threading is the spiral grooves located at the end of the gun which allow the barrel to be screwed into the gun. The solid portion of the gun’s barrel is known as the barrel shaft. This is place where the balls are shot down. The final part of the barrel is the porting. This is found near the end of the barrel with holes or openings on the sides of the barrel before the end and where the paintball exits the gun.

Material - There are a lot of different barrels out there on the market. You’ll also notice that they are made from a variety of different materials such as steel, aluminum and carbon fiber. The material of the barrel doesn’t affect the gun’s performance but it does play a role in how light the gun is.

Threading - It may seem obvious but I’ve run into many players who have made the unfortunate mistake of using the wrong threads on the wrong gun. I guess they don’t care too much about their guns. The point is different guns have different threads. Barrels with the wrong threads for your gun shouldn’t and normally won’t fit. For example, when you purchase a barrel for a Smart Parts gun, make sure you get a Smart Parts threaded barrel. Some manufacturers do sell adapters to change from one threading to another, but I recommend using the proper threading for your gun all together.

Length - I play with a guy who thinks that a longer barrel is a more accurate barrel. I’ll admit that’s somewhat true but not always. I never use a barrel longer than 12 or 14 inches since I have noticed numerous changes in the gun’s performance. The reason why players like the long barrel is all due to that physics stuff. The longer a paintball travels down a barrel, the more time it has to straighten out its trajectory, therefore giving you more consistently from one shot to the next. The negative of this is that more air is required to shoot the ball out of a longer barrel which causes it to be less efficient. Anyone who has ever played and lost to me in a match knows that I personally play with a 10 or 12 inch barrel.

Porting - The porting of the barrel are the holes on the sides near the tip. These reduce the sound of a gun firing. The porting allows the air to gradually escape from the barrel rather than in one load burst at the end. The more porting a barrel has then the quieter it will be, but with more porting you are losing efficiency in the gun since it will need more air to fire the ball.

Diameter - The key to good accuracy of your gun is not in the length of your barrel but how well your paint fits in the barrel. Barrels come in different sizes. Paintballs are supposed to .68 inches in diameter; however you’ll find that different brands of paintballs tend to be different sizes. Most of the manufacturers sell kits with multiple attachments so you can properly match your barrel to any size of paint.