Frozen Paintballs DO NOT WORK!

by Doug Lamont

     It’s a tale as old as time. “Frozen paintballs hurt worse than regular ones,” or “frozen paintballs are dangerous.” Frankly, the only danger with frozen paintballs is what they will do to your paintball gun! Don’t believe the hype, it’s a myth!

     Older brothers and cousins alike have become famous for trying to inflict pain and assert dominance over their younger kin by shooting at them with frozen paintballs. But in reality, putting frozen paintballs in their paintball marker puts them at a disadvantage. Accuracy decreases, paintballs become dimpled and misshapen and above all, they become more brittle. This can lead to a number of problems for the aggressor and can be a saving grace for the intended victim.

     Think back to middle school science when you learned about how heat causes atoms to accelerate and expand. Conversely, cold or freezing temperatures causes atoms to contract and be closer together, similar to how you curl up and give yourself a hug when it’s cold outside! Inside of each paintball is a pocket of air. This air pocket helps the paintball keep its rounded shape while in your hopper. When you freeze your paintballs, the air inside of each ball starts to contract, so much so that the shell of the Paintball often gets dimpled. As many NXL pros will tell you, dimpled paint definitely does not win gun fights, matches or tournaments. Simply put, imperfect spheres can’t fly straight!

     Suppose you freeze paintballs and you do manage to get some shots that go straight. Even in that ideal case, the cold temperatures actually cause the shell of the paintball to become more brittle. As a rule of thumb, the more brittle the paint, the less it hurts upon impact. The added brittleness can also make it extremely difficult for paintball markers to shoot the paint out of the barrel at all. These paintballs can become so brittle that they shatter inside the gun, coat the internals and barrel with paint and thus render the marker ineffective. Some may refer to the gun as a “flamethrower” by that point due to the massive amount of paint spewing from the barrel.

     Finally, when dealing with frozen paintballs it’s unlikely the paint will even still be frozen by the time it gets to the gun. If you somehow are able to take the frozen paintballs directly from your freezer and put them straight into your gun, you may have some luck with shooting very cold and very brittle paint. But without those ideal and unrealistic conditions, you will more than likely end up with very wet paintballs covered in condensation that begin to stick together and ruin the internals of any electronic gun because of the moisture.

     Hopefully this deters any readers from trying to shoot frozen paintballs, and lets new paintball players know that they won’t get hurt by frozen paintballs! To purchase high-quality, non-frozen paintballs be sure to visit Punishers Paintball today!

***Based out of Mansfield, Ohio, Punishers Paintball is dedicated to delivering premium products and even higher quality customer service, every time. Growing paintball is our mission and we take pride as ambassadors to the sport.***