[Toymaker]

Originally Posted by cbcsteve

A new interesting marking BB, better than your crappy blowup in the gun BBs

Supposedly can be washed off easily.

Thanks for taking an interest and posting a link cbcsteve.
The IT decided to pile another list of referral links on me and so I came by for a visit.
I'm Kevin Kirkpatrick, director of R&D for Grudge Tactical.
I'm an authoritative source for any questions you might have on these, and I'll try to be as candid as possible.

Yup... the marks come off with a damp rag in about 3-5 seconds. Get hit, call your hit, walk to respawn, wipe the mark off and get back in the game.

What these do isn't make a big wet mess, but leave a temporary mark that allows honorable players to see evidence of unfelt hits... and also sorts near misses because they will mark obstructions as well. Someone ducks around the corner half a second before the BB gets there and the BB hits a tree, then the mark will be on the tree and not on the player. Cuts way down on trash-talk and random accusations of cheating, hard feelings, all that sort of non-sense that don't need to be in the game that people are trying to enjoy.

...and on the other hand there are folks for whom the subject will never come up who will never see the need, and to those folks, good on ya. These are just a tool not some sort of rule change or imposition. They should never be dragged onto a field without the agreement of the other players, not because the mark is unmanagable but because this game is a game based on respect and honor. Out of respect for the field and players, new things should be discussed and adopted rather than imposed. I hope folks try them out, but I also hope that they don't just start marking unwary people up.

If you'd like to see how these fare in use, you can check out the ASF review and general threads... You can read the chronology of their evolution.
ASF reviews Blammo Kill-Markers
ASF discussion thread on paintballs
ASF discussion thread on Blammo Kill-Markers

All of the concerns and questions in this thread are addressed... and more.

Some of our users have discovered a new and unexpected side effect of the low marking energy requirement for Blammos. When a Blammo hits you squarely it leaves a dot, but at an angle it leaves a streak. The higher the angle the longer the streak. Some players using these in games with medics, are adopting a sort of medical triage system. The suggestion is non-unique so several different groups appear to be experimenting with this. They are assigning "points of damage" according to the type of hypothetical injury. You can easily tell what would have been a glancing hit from the mark, so dots, require more medical attention than streaks. Minor flesh wounds then are quick to recover... piercing limb injuries a bit longer... non-lethal body injuries next followed by head shots and deadly body shots. Imagination and creativity have expended their use well beyond what we ever intended to do with these.

Originally Posted by Mr.Hitman

Nice find, I like the colours. But it still won't be accurate..

300 rounds in a 3" group on full auto from 50 feet. The pics are in the review thread posted above. Shot from a GJ AK tac with stock everything. Why did I use a junk gun to test them? Because things go wrong more easily with a junk gun... I've put tens of thousands of rounds through this gun while deliberately withholding routine service and maintenance just to see what breaks first. So far nothing has. The types of guns these have been used in are now too numerous to list. No reports of interference with function or accuracy have been received.
They've also been fired through tightbores and some pretty spendy hardware by independent reviewers.

They mark at energies as low as 0.1 joule (actually tested to 0.033 joules, 60 FPS w/.20g) and have been fired reliably, accurately, and remained intact at 600 FPS in modified Systema guns, essentially placing the marking potential anywhere within the effective range of the gun. They are as accurate as any other high quality solid BB.

Spartan isn't the only interest in these... Our customers now include Canadian Military, US Military... US LEO's... UK...
We now service three continents and five countries and the list is growing.
The Canadian Distributor is Frontline Arms
In the UK Main Irish Airsoft
and Spartan Imports civilian distribution in the USA.

Originally Posted by dpvu

Looks better than crappy paint filled ones. Perhaps maybe once they get some heavier weights and stuff it'd be good. Still can't be like paintball because the mark's pretty small.

Quite right... Paintballs were invented for the US Forestry Service for marking trees. I don't see any reason that a mark needs to be big, wet and sticky in a game of honor... These make a small mark that provides visual evidence for sorting out unfelt hits and near misses, not to replace honor in the game, but as a tool to allow honorable people to find something else to argue about besides whether a BB hit a target, or not. Unfelt hits happen to honorable players, and people also mistake a near miss for a hit.

We now have .20g, .25g, and .28g available. Additional weights are coming, along with Bios and Glow-in-the-Dark tracer rounds currently in development.

The mark is dry and designed to resist secondary transfer (so it doesn't duplicate marks) and we don't expect some poor guy to show up on Youtube being forced to strip in the front yard and get hosed off by his wife before she'll let him in the house.

These provide something substantial that honorable people can use to settle an argument before one starts. How big a mark does that really take? We think, about the size of the BB should be fine.

Originally Posted by Amos

I prefer when people just call their hits or get banned from playing

I agree to a point... but when people get banned for being good at ducking, that isn't fair either. These aren't going to fix cheating. Banning cheaters will fix cheating.

What these do is take the hit from invisible, to visible... reducing the likelihood that people will miss calling a hit, and reduce the arguments and accusations of uncalled hits that sometimes happen in the game... Most importantly avoiding accusations of cheating based on hits that might not have actually occurred. That could suck the fun out of airsoft instantly for anyone.

Originally Posted by cbcsteve

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Yeah but how else are you going to paint a happy face on your opponent

Kinda like this...

Originally Posted by Drake

I'm sure some people will be thrilled at getting paint on their gear...

It isn't paint... designed not to bleed or stain, provide a reasonably high visibility marking that is temporary enough to be removed quickly in the field, but which doesn't just brush off easily by itself or get all over everything.
The mess is quite minimal. Depending on the energy at impact, between 5mm and 9mm. Comes off in 3-5 seconds with a damp rag... It usually takes longer than that to walk to respawn in most games.

Originally Posted by pusangani

if it is a coating, then the inner barrel would be covered in it, not so good for the guns.

I for one don't want paint on my gear and I'm no gear whore either

You like nice plain BBs then... covered with wax.
Yes... your nice plain BBs don't just polish up by themselves, the manufacturer waxes them to get them all nicely shiny. Don't sweat it though, just because you can't see the residue the wax does leave, doesn't mean it's bad for your gun either... If it concerns you, run a patch or two through once in a while.

Blammo Kill-Markers are coated with a pigment impregnated lubricant. The coating remains on the BB until an event occurs that exceeds a very low, minimum energy threshold for transfer... Some guns and mags have sharp points in them, and yes these tend to get a little residue on them. So far, accumulation in the barrel has not been an issue for those actually using them. Unless you have a sharp spot in your barrel, that isn't likely to occur. So... If you're worried about wax building up in your barrel from plain BBs, then patch your barrel once in a while. If you're worried that your barrel might become pretty slippery from the high lubricity Blammo coating, then definitely don't use them...
or maybe give 'em a fair shake. They might surprise you.

Originally Posted by L473ncy

Will this coating rub off in tightbores?

They've been tested in tightbores by independant users. The ASF review thread can answer all of your questions about that.

How exactly is the coating applied to a piece of clothing? Will it only mark when the BB is at a certain velocity and hits?

The coating is impact sensitive. While a paintball has a binary failure mode... beyond a certain range the paintball loses too much energy to break the capsule, so below a certain energy (about 0.85 joules) a paintball can't leave a mark... Drive them faster to raise the energy and they break in the gun...

Blammo Kill-Markers lose the ability to mark gradually with decrease in terminal ballistic energy, unlike a paintball. The minimum energy to mark with a Blammo is about 0.033 joules (a .20g BB at 60 FPS). Anything above about 0.1 joules and they mark pretty well, above about 0.3 joules and they will mark about as well as they are going to mark at higher energies.

At .1 joule the BB has already hit the ground. So whether you're using them in your sniper rifle, or your sidearm, if you can hit a target, you can mark the target.

Blammos are limited to... the effective range of the gun.

Sounds interesting but still it's like we want to be paintballers. We don't need a marking system all we need is, "You cheated so you're banned from playing with us".

Sometimes it's easy to see someone get hit. I mean if you actually see a BB bounce off the guy's face and he has a big ding in his chin, then he got hit, and you know he felt it... but people get hit in their sleeve, boot, on a mag pocket, water bottle... never feel the hit. That doesn't make them cheaters. Other times a person's eyes can play tricks on them. They watch a BB leave the barrel at 350 FPS and see it travel to the edge of their visual range... the last trajectory they actually saw tells them that it should have hit, yet if the target is outside the effective range of the gun anything could happen to the BB outside of the visual range of the shooter. In a lot of cases the BB could hook to the side or just fall to the ground... If they over-hop their gun the BB can even fly straight up into the air. They might swear that what they saw was a hit. Maybe some are hits, maybe not. The problem is that if the BB doesn't mark then you could be convinced that someone is cheating, when they aren't. That isn't either honorable or equitable.

Originally Posted by cbcsteve

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I've played in outdoor fields and paintball fields, even in indoor fields with no paint there still are dust bunnies that get smudged on my gear.

Rain I would understand, it was not pretty mud everywhere, deep water holes that looked like puddles and unprotected batteries connections malfunctioning

My view is similar... If I crawl through the mud all day I think the last thing I'm going to worry about is a spot that was actually designed to come out easily.
They will mark in the rain though. Wet target, wet gun, wet BBs. It doesn't matter. More details in the ASF review thread. So long as the gun can launch them, they'll work.

Originally Posted by cloves

Anybody ever use graphite coated bb's? I'm wondering if it's be much different than that?
I assume the graphite rubs off on the inside of your barrel and hop...but I haven't heard much complaint about those..... hrmmmm. Curious.
I wonder if it's like the chalk carpenters and builders use in plumb lines? that stuff can be messy

Some people actually do use chalk and you're right, chalk markers make a complete mess of everything, and everything you touch after handling them... but at least you can pick what color you want your hands to be. The mark they leave is dependent upon how much chalk sticks to the BB, which can vary.

Graphite can sometimes cause problems... but not problems from the graphite itself. Problems associated with graphite coated BBs are problems related to the oil the graphite is suspended in. It rubs off in the barrel and can sometimes cause buildup if the owner doesn't take proper care of his gun...
On the other hand, graphite won't stick too well to BBs without a trace of oil present... and it will make you look like you've been under the bonnet of the car changing out the alternator. At least it won't make your gun turn pink and goes nicely with OD greasepaint for the hardcore MILSIMers. Still, they're messy just to handle and the coating comes off too easily.

Blammos, are shiny, slippery, and don't get your hands or gun all messy. Nope... no chalk in them, and a totally different technology.

Blammos aren't likely to do this sort of thing (messing up a barrel)... As I said, one of the test guns I use has never once received service because we're trying to see what breaks on it first. It has tens of thousands of Blammos run through the same hop, same bucking, same barrel and the barrel has never been patched out.

Test swabs (not for the purpose of cleaning) have been taken just to see if the coating does come off. What we discovered is that the coating can leave residue in the hop body if the body has casting seams or sharp spots inside it, but that the residue itself ablates rather than building up. We haven't seen anything much in barrels, though it's possible. We have had a couple of people who run their barrels wet with silicone report some inner barrel transfer, but they have also reported that it never accumulates or interferes in any way with function or accuracy.

Originally Posted by Gunk

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Edit: Personally, I too am good with the current honour system... it's what sets us apart from the kids who 'need' paint or other markers to display their hits.

I am much more at ease with a group of people I know are honest and honorable enough to call their own hits, rather than feel the need to display a kill to prove it. It also speaks volumes about the players in question that they can be mature enough to play this way.

There are folks who will never see a reason to use these because they have a good group of players who are comfortable with each other, and good on ya. Who could possibly argue with that.

We didn't design these to replace honor... They're just a tool for use by honorable players. They won't fix cheating, but they can take the tension out of games where conflicts and arguments begin to interfere with the enjoyment of the game.