Is it Worth Building Your Own Paintball Gun? – Paintball Beasts

Building your own Paintball Gun at home? So you want to buy a paintball gun but are a little tight on budget, or perhaps you are a DIY enthusiast who loves doing science projects at home. Either way, this blog will help you build your own paintball gun with everyday parts.

Later in this guide, we will also discuss if it is really worth building your own paintball gun.

Paintball isn’t a cheap sport, with most paintball guns costing around a couple of hundred bucks. This expensive price tag can put off a lot of beginners who want to experience paintball but are on a tight budget.

Building your own paintball gun doesn’t involve rocket science and can be done easily at home. However, before making a paintball gun by yourself you must know how an actual paintball gun works.

How does a paintball gun work?

Let’s keep it as short and simple as possible. The working components of the paintball gun contain a barrel, hopper, trigger frame, and air tank. The hopper is used to feed paintballs into the barrel one at a time. When you pull the trigger, it releases gas (CO2 or Compressed Air) from the air tank into the barrel. This build-up pressure inside the barrel propels the paintball out at high velocity.

Building Your Own Paintball Gun – Step by Step Guide

Now that you know how a paintball gun works, it is time to start building your own paintball gun. But first, let’s look at the parts that will be needed for this project.

1. Plastic Water Bottle
2. Metal pipe
3. Candle Lighter with a long neck.
4. Aerosol spray

How to make a paintball Gun with homemade parts?

Here is a step-by-step guide to building your own paintball gun at home. Follow these steps completely in order to make a working paintball gun.

Step 1: Choosing the right material

When choosing a water bottle for this project, make sure that it has a cap or lid that can be tightly secured. Additionally, the walls of the bottle should be thick enough to withstand the pressure of the explosion. The metallic pipe that you will use as a barrel should have an inner diameter of 0.68 inches at should be at least 7-8 inches long.

Step 2: Make holes for the barrel and lighter

Make a hole for the barrel at the bottom of the bottle. Ideally, the hole should be in the center and wide enough to perfectly accommodate the metallic pipe. Next drill a smaller hole for the candle lighter close to the barrel hole. Make sure that the candle lighter you will be using has a long and flexible neck.

Step 3: Attach and secure the metallic pipe and lighter

Once the holes are drilled, attach and secure the metallic pipe with a hot glue gun. For the candle lighter, glue it securely to the side of the water bottle. Make sure that everything is sealed and secured tightly.

Step 4: Making the grip

Use any piece of scrap wood or plastic which you can use as a handle and attach it to the lighter. Alternatively, you can also use the cap of the aerosol spray as a handle. Just make sure that it fits perfectly in your hand.

Safety Guideline

After following all the steps correctly, your gun should work just fine. Now it is time to test your weapon. But before, here are some basic safety guidelines that you must follow. 

1. Test your paintball gun under the supervision of an adult
2. Always point your gun at a safe place
3. Use your paintball gun in an outdoor environment
4. Wear a paintball mask

Testing your Homemade Paintball Gun

Now that you have made your paintball gun and made sure that everything is fixed and sturdy, it is time to test your homemade paintball gun.

Step 1: Placing Paintball in the barrel

Place a paintball about 1 cm into the barrel, if the paintball sits in perfectly then you are good to go. On the other hand, if the paintball is smaller than the barrel’s diameter and falls out of the barrel without firing then you’ll need to wrap your paintball into a small piece of tissue paper. 

Doing this will allow enough pressure to be built inside the barrel before the paintball goes flying. For better results, you can also use a real paintball barrel from an old gun instead of using a metallic pipe. 

Step 2: Fill the bottle with an aerosol spray

Once the paintball is placed inside the barrel, now it is time to fill the bottle with an aerosol spray. This step is very crucial for both safety and performance purposes. If the amount of gas is too little, the paintball will come out too slow and might not even break on impact. On the other hand, if the amount of gas sprayed is too much, then there is a chance that the bottle will leak or in the worst case explode. 

The ideal amount of gas spray for a 750ml bottle is around 3-4 pumps of spray. Although it is recommended to use a very little amount of spray at first and then gradually increase it till you know that the velocity is just right. 

Step 2: Secure the cap and Shoot.

After filling the bottle with aerosol spray, secure the bottle cap immediately. Make sure the cap is secured nicely and tight. Once everything is set, press the trigger of the candle lighter. This gun uses flame to react with gas in order to propel paintballs out of the barrel.

Building your own paintball gun – Is it worth it?

Now that we have learned how to make your own paintball gun, there is one that still needed to be answered. Was all the effort that we put into making this gun really worth it?

Considering the fact that it is a highly unreliable one-shot weapon and doesn’t perform even close to what a real paintball gun would perform. I think it is not worth the time and effort, but it is still a cool science experiment if you follow all the safety guidelines correctly. 

Apart from that, in order to play actual paintball, you would still need a real paintball marker. There is a common misconception among paintballers that the best paintball markers are the ones that are expensive. In reality, this is not true.

Paintball marker comes in a variety of different price tags. There are a lot of cheap paintball guns that can be bought for a fraction of the price of their high-end counterparts. Moreover, you can also rent out paintball guns from your local paintball fields instead of buying your own. 

If you need to find out how you can get a cheap paintball gun, you should read our guide about the Best Paintball Gun Under 200$.

Disclaimer: All the information provided above is strictly for educational purposes only. Readers are advised to use this information responsibly.