Hammerhead Barrel Kit Review

bang stixx, paintball barrel, hammerhead kit You've heard the hype and you've seen them used by sponsored teams everywhere, but are hammerhead barrels worth the price?

Before I get into the review, lets talk a little about Hammerhead. First of all, as you can see below their barrels are not cheap. Not at all.

SharkTooth - $67 with 1 sizing fin, $173 for full 5 fin kit
Battle Stikxx - $118 with 1 sizing fin, $193 for full 5 fin kit
Bang Stikxx - $122 with 1 sizing fin, $203 for full 5 fin kit
MoFo - $109 (on sale) with 1 sizing fin, $217 for full 5 fin kit

Hammerhead barrels need to have "fins" in order to attach to your paintball gun. Each "fin" is sized .679, .683, .686, .688, .690. You can purchase them all in a "5 Fin Value Kit", pick 3 for a "3 Fin Value Kit", or you can do what most ballers on a budget do and purchase the "Barrel & Fin Combo" (1 barrel, 1 fin).

Now lets get into what makes these barrels so special...

This is What Hammerhead Says About Their Barrels

"HammerHead® barrels are the most advanced paintball barrel in the industry today. Gun-drilled from solid aluminum barstock, not tubing due to the need to hold “Extremely Tight” tolerances” so we can produce the finest quality barrel possible. Our barrels are manufactured to exacting tolerances for accuracy, sound displacement and weight. Each barrel is carefully milled, micro-honed and polished to ensure these tolerances do not deviate from our engineering parameters. Under development for more then 6 years, HammerHead® is the state of the art in barrel engineering. We invite you to test our barrel against the current line of competitors, and discover for yourself why we believe this barrel will be the last one you'll buy."

About the Rifling Process
"Our rifling is carefully done using the same process used in making military weapons. The rates of rotation, the depth of rifling, the precise number and dimensions of widths of lands and depth of rifling has has been carefully selected after many, many hours of testing to perform best at shots around 280 ft/sec. Our goal is for Hammerhead's patented combination of sizers, rifling, porting, and muzzle design will leave a smile on on your face. All of the design components just mentioned are critical to achieve superior accuracy including ball sizing, projectile velocity, ball rotation rates, and muzzle design."

About Testing Their Barrels
"Our engineers undertook the task of developing a barrel specifically designed for paintball to meet the strict requirements. Existing technology could not meet their needs. Test results showed some of the same principles in the rifle industry applied to paintball but key differences existed due to the liquid fill and ball characteristics."

Pretty convincing right? Makes you believe their barrels are worth the money. They even have cherry-topping-charts that show how insanely accurate they are.

What I Bought
I purchased a "Bang Stikxx 5 Fin Value Kit" for $215, shipping included, which came with a nice set of instructions as well as an aluminum ball sizer and thread lube. Overall the presentation of the kit is nice, the box is a sleek black and the barrel, fins, and accessories look professional.

My Shooting Test
As per Hammerheads instructions, I turned down the velocity of my ICE Epic to 285, any higher and paintballs will whip to the side. After shooting at 285 I found that my shots where still way off target, so I continued to turn it down till I found the "sweet spot" hammerhead mentions in the instruction manual. 240fps happened to be my "sweet spot"... or more what I would rather call... "I guess this is it spot."

bang stixx, paintball barrel, hammerhead kit After Shot Thoughts
I tried 2 different types of paint, I sized each paintball up perfectly, just enough so a wisp of air could blow the paintball out of the barrel. Everything was by the book, and yet, nothing miraculous happened. There was indeed a visible spin on the paintball, one you could see as the paintball left the barrel. You could also see the effect it had on the paintball, which from what I saw wasn't exactly a good one when it comes to accuracy...

Every now and then 1 shot would be dead on, but the other 4 out of 5 shots would miss the target horribly. Maybe I needed to turn my velocity down, but 240fps was already pretty low, any lower would have been undesirable.

I have to say after putting nearly 800 rounds of 3 different kinds of paintballs through this barrel I am less then enthusiastic about the results. This $215 kit didn't even come close to outperforming my $15 expired Mako barrel.

In short, Hammerhead over-promised and under-delivered, and you don't have to read just my review to see that. Many players are upset with the accuracy of their own Hammerhead barrels and are left realizing the answer to the famous question, does barrel rifling actually work?