"New look, same great taste." - What it should say on a RP Scherer box.

This page contains information about paintball, and more specifically about the guns and gear. My personal experience has been mostly with Indian Creek Designs' paintguns. Given the relative shortage of "end-user" information on ICD's guns, I'll try to share what I know. Feel free to email me with questions, but check the links below first.

My paintgun:

My primary marker (P.C. term for "gun") is an Indian Creek Designs Alleycat II. At the moment it has the following configuration:

• Factory body, frame, grip and barrel. I'm looking for a new barrel. The stock one is pretty good but the shots slice at a distance. My current pick would be a SmartParts Boss Progressive barrel.
• ICD Raised Sight Rail. Well worth the $20. Looks real spiffy.
• Tasco EZ-Sight. I don't recommend it highly, but it's cheap and works. If you want a good paintball sight, look at ADCO, who arguably make the best for paintball use. Tasco makes some excellent handgun sights, but they are overkill for a paintgun.
• Viewloader VL-200 loader. This isn't that exciting, except mine is custom painted. If you like the way mine's painted, contact me and I'll see if my brother is willing to paint one for you.
• ACI coiled remote hose. I don't recommend it either, but again, it's cheap. I'd rather have either a straight stainless braided hose, or better yet, a Parkcoil hose. The cheaper hoses have a tendency to leak or burst when you CO2 gets above 900 psi or so, which is all too easy on a sunny day. The braided and Parkcoil hoses are much, much safer and don't cost much more. I bought the ACI because I think the braided ones are too stiff, and the Parkcoils hadn't been introduced yet.

A closer look

Left hand view -+- Right hand view

Add-ons / modifications:

• Lightened trigger (lighter spring, polished hammer and sear).
• All internal components polished smooth for lower friction. This includes the trigger arm, sear, hammer, spring guide, and valve pin.
• External Recock Adjuster. Handy when your tank is cold, running low, or both, and the gun doesn't want to recock. Crack it open a bit more and you can last through the game.
• Adjustable Trigger Stop. Trims about 2mm from the trigger stroke. You only pull the trigger as far as it need to fire, so there's no wasted motion and it feels more solid.
• Thumbscrew Velocity Adjust. A large capscrew instead of a set screw makes it easy to adjust velocity without tools. This can be a bad thing in the hands of cheaters, since there's no lock on it (tourney cap). Also in this picture, my easy-off ASA plug. If the plug gets stuck, you can twist it with the end of a hex wrench and free it.
• 90 degree elbow. Not only does it look cool, but it routes the hose away from the hand for ease of use. I had a really wild looking assemblage of tubing and Swagelok fittings on the rear port, but this arrangement is much lighter and looks cleaner.
• Stainless steel fasteners, Almost all of the screws have been replaced with SS equivalents. The stock black-phosphate steel ones can rust after being exposed to rain, paint spatter, etc. The only screws not replaced (yet) are the ones holding on the powerfeed, since they are a fairly strange shape and one is stripped (oops!). Also, the velocity screw and the trigger stop setscrew are regular black since they are sizes difficult to find in stainless. Note that if you install stainless screws on your gun, you should lube the screw threads with silicone grease or anti-seize first. Otherwise there is a chance that the screws will seize in the aluminum threads. The Alleycat is thoroughly hard-anodized, so it doesn't suffer badly from this problem. If you add your own screw holes, like the trigger stop, make sure to use grease.

Other markers

• SplatMaster Rapide semi-automatic pistol. This thing's about ten years old and is unique for a number of reasons. It is powered by 12-gram CO2 cartridges, and is semi-automatic without using extra gas to recock it. Instead, the entire bolt and hammer assembly is driven by the trigger, making for a very long and very stiff trigger pull. But it works! I don't have a picture of this yet. I use it in limited-ammo (20 round) games, since the attached loader only holds 20 shots. With its aftermarket barrel and a fresh 12-gram, it's fairly accurate.
• Akari AutoTalon. This is a custom, one-of-kind, one-off gun I built. It is a $30 Brass Eagle Talon pump-action pistol, the cheapest paintgun there is, modified with pneumatics to be semi-automatic. Follow the link to see my dedicated AutoTalon page. As soon as I get all the bugs worked out, I'll introduce all new bugs by adding electronics to it for fully-automatic firing.

Related Links:

The first and best FAQ on the 'Cats can be found here. I am a co-author of this page, so maybe I'm biased, but I think it's pretty good.

Indian Creek Designs Owners Group

Someone was kind enough to start an owner's group (ICDOG) so we didn't have to. Why not stop in and take a look?

ION - The ICD Owner's Network

Not be confused with either our 'Cat site or the ICDOG, the ION provides info on both the 'Cats and the Desert Fox, along with additional general-interest information about equipment and the game itself.

ICD Home Page

And of course, Indian Creek's own web page is quite good:

Rec.Sport.Paintball FAQ

For general paintball-related discussion/comments/questions, a good place to check is the rec.sport.paintball newsgroup. Before posting a question, why not try looking it up in the R.S.P. FAQ? It is also mirrored on the MIT FAQ Archives Server.

Cooper-T

For those of you daring enough to build your own CO2 plumbing, Cooper-T is a nice place to look for those odds & ends, such as bottomline adaptors, elbows, swivles, and valves. Also, they make a thread-in adapter to run CA on your Talon. It screws into the grip and connects an ASA port in place of a 12g. cartridge. I've made one myself from scratch, but something tells me Cooper-T's model is better.

The AutoTalon: A semi-automatic Talon conversion

I don't know what put the idea in my head.. probably the fact that I had some pneumatic parts that looked an awful lot like Autococker components (they aren't.)

So I modified a Brass Eagle Talon pump-action pistol into a semi-automatic. It's pretty much a quick-and-dirty job, but I'm not going to waste time trying to do a pretty job on a $30 gun. At this point it is mostly done, although it needs a new pneumatic ram to replace the leaky one I have now. Also, a small low-pressure regulator (similar to the WorrGames Sledgehammer, found on the Autococker) would be a nice touch.

I made an FAQ for this project, which is current as of March 10.

Read the Autotalon FAQ here.

There are a few pictures, including a labeled one with a preliminary parts listing.

Send comments, gripes, suggestions to: Jameel Akari

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Last modified 5 Oct 1999