You say that you want to make a short barrel and you're going to take a hack saw to cut it with?...........DON'T!!!! I'll show you a simple way to cut your barrel and get a perfect 90* angle on that cut as well. A short barrel is certainly not going to get you the best efficiency and will make your marker a bit loud but it does look kind of cool and will certainly attract attention on the field. Not exactly the barrel you'll want to use for woodsball but appropriate for speedball or close quarters play and hugging that bunker will be a bit easier. It will give some reason for keeping that poor quality stock barrel that came with your marker that you threw in the corner and has done nothing but collected dust since you stopped using it as well.

Short Barrels

As stated, shortening your barrel won't make it very efficient but if you make it too short chances are you're going to convert your marker into a total gas hog. If you have a high pressure marker you're not going to want to make the barrel any shorter than 6" and if it's a low pressure marker you're going to want to stay within a length of 8" or longer. You can make them shorter but it takes at least that much length for either to reach velocity. If you make it shorter you're going to need to up the pressure or dwell duration time to compensate for the shorter time to reach velocity and that means using more propellant.

Cutting The Barrel

The most simple manner to cut an aluminum barrel on a perfect 90* angle is to use a pipe cutting tool. It makes the task simple and you don't need to even clamp it in a vice to cut it. This means no possible vice gouges in the surface of the anodizing from the cross cut jaws of the vice . You can still scratch the anodizing on the surface of the barrel with the pipe cutter but we're going to wrap a few layers of masking or duct tape on the area to be cut to evade that result. If using masking tape, you may want to use a few more layers since it is not quite as strong as duct tape. Make sure the tape wrap is wider than the rollers of the pipe cutter. Turn the pipe cutter in the same direction as you wrapped the tape as well or it may bunch up and you'll need to rewrap it again.

Once the tape is in place, mark the length, put the cutter on the barrel and have at it. Take your time and only put enough pressure on the cutting disk of the pipe cutter to make a small incision at a time. Twist the knob of the pipe cutter until it feels slightly tight when rolling it around the barrel. Revolve the cutter around the barrel as many times as it takes until it feels loose again then tighten it a bit more and continue the incision. When tightening the knob, it should feel tight yet the cutting disk should be free wheeling.

Now that you've cut through the barrel you'll notice that the cut is on a slight angle because of the slight angular shape of the cutting disk. Lay a piece of rough sandpaper on a flat surface such as a table and while holding the cut end of the barrel in a perfect 90* angle, sand the angle off of the end of the barrel in a circular motion til it's perfectly flat. A good substitute for sandpaper are those Scotch type sanding sponges. They are relatively inexpensive and you can use them over and over unlike regular sandpaper. Take some fine sandpaper now and continue sanding in the circular motions until the scratches from the rough sandpaper are gone. There will most likely be a slight flared edge on the inside diameter of the bore so use the fine sandpaper to rid the bore of this flare. All you'll need to do now is use some metal polish and polish the sanded end to a mirror finish and your task is complete.

Technical Information