Have you ever wondered what those colorful spheres that burst so dramatically on opponents during a paintball game are actually made of? The answer lies in gelatin – the same ingredient you’ll find in jello or medicine capsules. It’s gelatin that gives paintballs their unique properties: they’re durable enough to survive being fired, yet fragile enough to break upon impact with the target.
From Trees to the Battlefield | History of Paintball
The history of paintball began in the 1960s, though no one was thinking about recreational fun back then. Charles Nelson of Nelson Paint Company invented a marking pistol to help farmers and foresters – allowing them to mark cattle or trees for cutting from a distance.
The real breakthrough came in 1981, however, when a group of friends decided to settle a long-standing debate: would a city dweller fare better in the woods than an experienced hunter? Hayes Noel, a Wall Street broker, and Charles Gaines, a writer, came up with the idea of using Nel-Spot 007 pistols to create a survival game. On June 7, 1981, the first official paintball game took place in New Hampshire. Twelve players, including foresters, surgeons, filmmakers, and investors, competed on an 80-acre plot. Interestingly, the winner was forester Ritchie White – without firing a single shot.
From that first game in June 1981, paintball began gaining popularity. By March 1982, the first commercial paintball field opened in New Hampshire, and just a year later, the first national tournament with a $3,000 prize pool took place, won by the Canadian team The Unknown Rebels.
How Does Paintball Work? | Types of Games
Modern paintball is much more than a simple game of hide-and-seek with markers. The sport has developed various forms of play, adapted to players’ preferences and skill levels.
Woodsball – Tactics in Natural Terrain
Woodsball, also known as scenario paintball, is the oldest form of the game. Matches take place in natural environments – most often in forests, where players use trees, bushes, and terrain features as cover. The game is tactical in nature and can last several hours. Teams range from a few to several dozen players, and participants often wear camouflage clothing and use equipment resembling military gear. In this variant of paintball, strategy, patience, and concealment skills are paramount.
Speedball – Fast Action on an Open Field
Speedball is the opposite of woodsball – a dynamic, fast-paced variant played on small, symmetrical fields equipped with inflatable obstacles. Matches last just a few minutes, and eliminations happen in a flash. Speedball demands excellent reflexes, agility, and perfect team coordination. There’s no room for hiding – everything happens in open space, where reaction speed and precision matter most.
It’s speedball that has become the foundation of professional paintball leagues.
Paintball Equipment
Every player’s basic equipment includes a paintball gun, protective mask, and paintballs.
The mask is absolutely mandatory – it protects the eyes, ears, and face from being hit by a paintball traveling at speeds up to 90 meters per second. The first players in 1981 used simple workshop safety goggles – today’s masks are sophisticated devices offering full protection and good visibility.
Players often wear additional gear: protective undershirts with padding, elbow and knee guards, and special vests with pockets for extra paintball containers. In speedball, loose, thick clothing is popular as it better absorbs impacts from close range.
Paintballs Structure
A standard paintball is a precisely manufactured spherical capsule approximately 17.3 mm (0.68 inches) in diameter. It consists of two main components, each playing a crucial role in its function.
Gelatin Shell
The outer shell is a thin-walled capsule made from a mixture of gelatin, plasticizers, and other additives. It must meet seemingly contradictory requirements: be strong enough to survive the compression force in the marker barrel during firing, yet fragile enough to reliably break upon contact with the target.
Shell thickness is critical to paintball quality.
- A shell that’s too thick can cause painful impact or even fail to break, disqualifying the hit.
- A shell that’s too thin will cause paintballs to break in the hopper or barrel.
High-quality paintballs feature near-perfect sphericity and a uniform, very thin shell, guaranteeing breakage upon first contact with the target.
Fill
The interior of the paintball contains a colored liquid based on polyethylene glycol (PEG), food colorings, and thickeners. The paint is non-toxic, water-soluble, and biodegradable, making it safe for both players and the environment.
Manufacturers offer paintballs in a rainbow of colors – from bright pinks and oranges to classic yellows and reds. Color isn’t just aesthetic – tournaments often use different colors for different teams, making it easier for referees to verify hits.
Technical Gelatin | The Heart of Paintball Production
Technical gelatin with strictly defined parameters is used in paintball production.
The most important parameter is the Bloom scale – a value determining gel hardness. For paintballs, manufacturers use gelatin with Bloom strength in the range of 200-240. This precisely selected value ensures optimal balance between elasticity and brittleness.
Paintball gelatin with 200-240 Bloom strength allows for creating a shell that:
- maintains structural integrity during loading and firing,
- withstands compression force in the marker barrel,
- breaks immediately upon contact with the target,
- doesn’t cause excessive pain upon impact.
Other Key Properties of Paintball Gelatin
Besides Bloom strength, manufacturers also pay attention to other parameters of gelatin used in paintball production. What specifically are we talking about?
- Stable viscosity – ensures uniform processing and prevents unwanted anomalies in shell thickness. Differences in viscosity can lead to weak points in the paintball structure, resulting in premature breakage.
- Gelatin purity – impurities can weaken the shell structure and cause variations in strength between paintballs in the same batch. Quality paintball gelatin features low ash content (below 2%), high transparency (above 500 mm), and controlled gel strength breakdown (below 15%).
The gelatin used in paintball is sometimes high-quality food-grade gelatin, the same used in food and pharmaceutical production. This makes paintballs fully safe – even accidental paint ingestion poses no health risk.
How Are Gelatin Paintballs Made?
Paintball production is a sophisticated technological process using the same machines that create soft gelatin capsules for medicines.
Stage 1: Gelatin preparation
The process begins by dissolving powdered gelatin in water in a special tank. It’s crucial to conduct this process quickly and with minimal air – created bubbles could later create weak points in the paintball shell.
Plasticizers, most commonly sorbitol or glycerin, are added to the gelatin. These substances increase shell elasticity and facilitate its forming. The proportions between gelatin and plasticizers are each manufacturer’s closely guarded trade secret – they determine the final properties of the paintball.
The prepared gelatin mixture is then spread onto two wide strips several millimeters thick. These strips go to the encapsulating machine.
Stage 2: Encapsulation
The encapsulating machine is a precision device equipped with two cylindrical rollers with carved semicircular indentations. The gelatin strips pass through these rollers, which rotate toward each other. Injected paint pushes the gelatin into the indentations, and when the opposing halves meet, the paintball is simultaneously sealed and cut from the strip. This process happens at lightning speed – modern machines can produce up to 35,000 paintballs per hour.
Freshly made paintballs are very soft due to high moisture content. They contain 30-40% water, making them too delicate for immediate use.
Stage 3: Drying
The first drying stage takes place in a tumble dryer. Paintballs are gently rotated, serving two purposes: removing the thin layer of oil from the capsule exterior (oil prevents paintballs from sticking during production) and partially evaporating moisture from the gelatin. This process lasts several to a dozen minutes and additionally rounds the paintballs.
The second stage is drying in climate-controlled rooms. Paintballs are arranged on special trays and left in controlled conditions for 24-48 hours. Air at appropriate temperature and humidity circulates around the trays, gradually evaporating remaining moisture. Drying time is critical – too short leaves paintballs soft and prone to deformation, too long makes them brittle and prone to premature breakage.
Each manufacturer has their own closely guarded drying parameters. These subtle differences – temperature, humidity, time, gelatin formula – determine final product quality and are often treated as trade secrets.
Stage 4: Quality control
After drying, paintballs undergo rigorous quality control. Workers visually inspect them for obvious defects – dents, paint leaks, irregularities. More detailed inspection is performed on a random sample from each batch.
Checked parameters include:
- each paintball’s diameter,
- weight,
- sphericity,
- breaking strength,
- absence of air bubbles in the shell.
Paintballs that pass all tests are packaged in plastic bags (usually 500 pieces) or cartons. Manufacturers use weight-based packaging, so the actual number of paintballs in a package may vary slightly.
Why Aren’t All Paintballs Equal?
At first glance, all paintballs look similar, but quality differences between them are significant and directly impact gameplay experience.
Budget Paintballs
Są jednak całkowicie wystarczające do rekreacyjnej gry na lokalnym polu, szczególnie dla początkujących graczy, którzy dopiero uczą się podstaw.
The cheapest paintballs often use lower-quality technical gelatin or less precise production processes. They may have uneven shell thickness, less rounded shape, or unstable fill. Such paintballs are more prone to breaking in the hopper (so-called chopping), may fly unpredictably due to lack of perfect sphericity, and their seam – the visible line where two shell halves meet – tends to be thicker and more visible.
However, they’re completely sufficient for recreational play at local fields, especially for beginner players still learning the basics.
Tournament Paintballs
High-grade tournament paintballs are produced using the purest gelatin.
These products feature:
- near-perfect sphericity (diameter differences don’t exceed hundredths of a millimeter),
- very thin, uniform shell ensuring reliable breakage,
- minimal seam that doesn’t affect flight path,
- bright, dense fill that’s hard to hide,
- greater resistance to temperature and humidity fluctuations.
Of course, quality has its price – premium paintballs typically cost several times more than basic ones.
How to Store Paintballs?
Paintballs are rather finicky products requiring proper storage conditions. Gelatin is a hygroscopic material – it easily absorbs water from the environment. This property, while beneficial for biodegradability, creates storage challenges.
Optimal storage conditions are temperatures around 59-64°F (15-18°C) in a dry environment. Even brief exposure to heat and moisture can be enough for paintballs to deform.
Contrary to popular belief, freezing doesn’t extend paintball shelf life – quite the opposite, water crystallization in gelatin destroys the shell structure. Moreover, frozen paintballs are dangerous (can cause serious injuries) and their use is prohibited at all official tournaments.
Paintballs should remain sealed in original packaging until use. After opening, they’re best used within a few weeks.
Gelatin Paintballs | Summary
Gelatin paintballs are a fascinating combination of chemistry, engineering, and sport. What appears to be a simple colored projectile is actually the result of a complex production process requiring precisely selected ingredients, controlled drying, and rigorous quality control.
Gelatin, being the heart of every paintball, is what makes this sport safe, eco-friendly, and exciting. Its natural properties – elasticity, brittleness, biodegradability – make paintball a unique activity that allows thousands of people worldwide to enjoy the adrenaline without leaving a trace on the environment.
Whether it’s recreational fun with friends at a local field or a professional high-stakes tournament – every time a paintball breaks on target with that satisfying crack, it’s gelatin that’s responsible for that effect, making paintball so popular worldwide.