What was paintball like back when you started, and how has it changed for you over the years?

This is a hard question, when i started playing the internet was something we  used to research for book reports in school. internet paintball and  sites like PBN and TechPB were never even thought of. So the only information we ever got about the game was from players at our local  field, who were less then welcoming to some junior high kids with  rentals. I was always very curious about gear, and I was always the one who asked whatever experienced player about what he had. Angel was something we had all heard of, but never seen pictures of. I remember seeing my first angel, my first autococker, and guns like that. Their owners were quite rude to me, and rumors like autocockers shooting more accurately were things we readily ate up. As I said, information was rare, you couldn’t just google something, so you had to talk to the guys at the field to learn anything about paintball. it was hard, information was skewed and warped, and people were quite rude to us.

So do you think the players have changed at all? Do you think they’re more helpful and welcoming to the average first timer? or do you think that may have gotten worse?

I really hope so. Its sometime hard to put yourself back in that situation and see what the sport looks like from that perspective. I think there are a lot of great players today who are trying thier best.

Why do you play paintball?

I love it. is there any better answer? I love the combination of strategy, physical skill and teamwork. I also enjoy the purity of it. I may not be the best every time i step onto the field, but I’ll do my best, and we’ll see who comes out on top.

What is your home field, and what does it have to offer?

The two fields i would call my home are Splat Tag in Wisconsin and Air Assault Paintball in Maple Plain. I really enjoy playing at Splat Tag in the summer because the people, and the variety. I like AAP too, because you can’t find a better speedball facility in the state then that one.

Your more of a woodsball/scenario player, tell us what you like more about that style of play over X-Ball/NPPL formats.

Like i hinted to a couple of time already, I consider myself just a paintball player. Yes, I enjoy playing in the woods, but I also really enjoy speedball formats too. I am a big pump player, and speedball lends itself better to pump play I think. more clean lanes, good gun fights, and chances to move up the field with a lightweight setup. Unlike the woods where you have brush, twigs, and plenty of things to slow you down.

I think my personal ideal field is urban simulation type fields. a perfect combination of the two. it turns out parked cars play exactly the same as Doritos too!

Currently you’re doing Punkworks, how did that get formed?

PunkWorks came about basically because of a challenge put out by Sean Scott, then of Smart Parts, now he works for Pro-Caps. Sean had a thread on PBN talking about how the old shoebox style shockers could shoot farther then flatlined tippmans and such. This was back when i was in college for engineering so i was already very frustrated at the paintball industry for its lack of credible and public scientific knowledge. i figured, what the hell, and i got myself a shoebox shocker, called a guy name bryce i knew from Pump Days and we took it out and shot it, stuck it on my youtube channel.

So punkworks was born out of my own frustration with the lack of knowledge out there in paintball.

What was the end result with that test? Did you prove him wrong?

Yeah, well we knew the result of that one before we started! that started us on kind of a “mythbusters of paintball” kind of thing, but then we got a hold of some much more serious questions, like what does a barrel really do?

Do you think the length of the barrel really matters or is it how you use it?

Well, it turns out bore size is the most important. you want a nice and tight fit! I’m not kidding! haha

How did you end up joining forces with Mike over at TechPb?

At the time Mike’s videos were making the rounds on PBN. PBN was THE website for paintball at the time. and most people realized that PBN is a shithole, even back then. But the deal with PBN was that it was so large that if you wanted to talk to anybody of any significance, you had to be on PBN. So i had seen many of mikes videos from PBN and  i really liked what he was saying. his first video was how to take apart a halo B, and he we giving everyone basic tips that i wish i had heard when i was a new player. things like how to BST, what upgrades to get, how to take care of the equipment we already owned … stuff that yes, being a seasoned player i knew, but i also saw that this was information i wish i had gotten as a new player. he also told the truth, that the shocker SFT is a crappy gun, and didn’t suck up to anyone.

I also saw that PunkWorks (which i don’t think had an official name at the time) was not going to jive with anything currently out there. No one wants to touch science because it offends sponsors, and sponsors are big money. so PBN wasn’t going to give us any protection, and no other forum was really big enough to get the traffic to make our stuff mainstream. lots of people suggested making my own forum, but my thoughts were always “what good does it do if im the only one, or a small group is only one who knows about this work?”

So we needed something that was irreverent and something that was going to be mainstream. TechPB and Mike fit the bill perfectly. I talked to Mike, who had heard of us, and seen what we do, and we have a  lot to thank Mike for. He has given us lots of things through the years, and he has really gone to bat with companies that we have offended and told them to shove it.

Do you make money off of your YouTube channel?

Some, I suppose. certainly not even paid me back for what the content costs in terms of time and money. Youtube isn’t a place to get rich, its a place to get found.

How many subscribers do you currently have, and how did you go about growing your channel?

looks like i am around 2,600-2,700. at first we were posting all of our testing videos on my channel, but soon we split off our own PunkWorksPaintball channel, which has around the same number of subs. Content is the way to grow your channel. do something new, something no one has seen before. so many channels have crappy gear reviews, or videos from there local field, but they don’t amount to much because they aren’t doing anything different then anyone else.

Were you able to get other YouTubers to send traffic your way?

Our biggest supporter has been Mike at TechPB. Whenever we can get him to drop our name, we are happy.

What has been one of your greatest challenges for your paintball science experiments?

The greatest challenge isn’t the experiments themselves. they aren’t very complicated, vice a gun, shoot it at a board, record the impacts … not rocket science. sure we have done some cleaver, and fun stuff especially with the high speed camera, but at the core of it, we don’t do that sophisticated work.

The hardest thing about PunkWorks is dealing with the paintball public. there is so much brand loyalty, or old myths, and subjectivity in paintball that its hard for people to take a rational approach to it. so we spend a lot of time teaching people the basics of what an experiment is, what we control, what we don’t, what basic statistics tells us, and stuff like that.

How do you think we can help bring in new players?

I think paintball gets tons of new players. getting people to the field for a day of play is relatively easy. we already talked about how everyone likes to suspend reality for a bit and let the animal inside take over.

The trick is getting them back a second time. and a third time.

We need to treat new players better there first time out, so they come out a second time. jokes about noobs and such don’t help, fast guns scare people, and people need good trigger control when playing with new players. we also need to teach new players how to play, and get them quality information. in this respect i think the internet has been huge. the availability of information is so great we now boarder on too much information.

Have you made an effort to introduce any of your friends or family to the game?

Yes, mostly try to get people back into the game. all the guys I started with quit, and the next generation of guys I played with quit too. mostly i try to get them back on the field, because its pretty easy to do now that we have more time and money after college.

What keeps you playing paintball?

I used to be much more interested in the technology and strategy and upgrading equipment and such. but in the last few years i have really not had the urge to get back into that. i just enjoy playing the game. Gimmie a gun, i don’t care which, gimmie a feild, i don’t care what, and gimmie someone to play against, i don’t care who, and lets have some fun!

What gun do you use, and why do you like it?

I have a pretty extensive collection by now, and i don’t think i have played two full days of paintball in a row with the same gun before. My most frequently used and guns I have sworn I will never sell are my phantoms, a trusty slider cocker, and my Emag. I tend to use the gun I’m most interested in shooting that day, regardless of format im playing (within reason). sometimes that means im out there with a stock class paintball with the ramping guys, or shooting my karnivior out there in the mud and brush.

What is your favorite gun of all time (Past or Present)

Now you hit a really hard question! that’s a hard one, but i honestly think that in the end, i would never get bored of shooting a phantom. I have a huge soft spot for cockers and old LCD angels though too.

Your channel features a lot of older guns, how do you go about getting the guns for the show? Are they borrowed or do you purchase them?

At first, they were just guns i owned. the first few shows were all straight from my collection. and then if i bought a new old gun, i’d do a show on it. but pretty soon the show got such a good following that people will often send me messages and contact me about getting there guns on the show.  If its something i have wanted to do, i’ll split shipping and get the gun for the show. there are lots of old school guns i had already owned before i started the show, and i didn’t have the money to buy a copy and shoot an episode, so the fans really helped me out and lent me some really nice bits.

Have you considered buying the guns & selling them during or right after the show?

Yes, i went threw a terrible gun whore phase. I’m sure i have owned over 100 guns by now.

What was your favorite gun to talk about and why?

Cockers … without a doubt. cockers are like world religions, you subscribe to a faith when really love cockers. you got your danny love guys who are all about your snappy gun fighting triggers, and you got your belsales guys who are all about that silky smooth trigger feel for sustained shooting. thats the great thing about cockers, you can run them so many different ways, with such different feel and performance, there is really no end to tuning a cocker. when you run into another person who knows cockers, you can go on and on for probably hours talking about cockers.

Outside of paintball, what do you do for a living?

I work at 3M as a mechanical engineer.

Finally what MN Paintball player (Past or Present) would you like to see featured next?

Bryce Larson, the better half of PunkWorks of course!

Sounds like you guys are married.

Bryce’s wife refers to me as Bryce’s boyfriend, so your shockingly close!