The first Palmer paintball gun I had ever heard of was the Nasty Typhoon. I fell in love with that 'gun, but I knew I would probably never have one. I started to do some investigating and found out about other Palmer guns. I found out about their pumps and Strokers and then the Typhoons. The more I learned about Typhoons, the more I wanted one.

I started to watch Warpig's classified adds for Typhoons. I found a number of Typhoons that were fairly tricked out (i.e. out of my price range). Then I found an ad for a Bad Boyz Toyz Typhoon. It was number 31 and had a 10" J&J brass barrel. Best of all it was in my price range. I didn't really want a Typhoon with a removable barrel at the time, but the price was right, so I couldn't pass it up.

I've heard two stories about how the BBT Typhoons came to be. The first story I heard was that a few years ago Bad Boyz Toyz took about 150 Typhoons and modified them with removable barrels and put on new serial numbers (BBXX). They eventually gave up the mod for reasons I don't know about.

The other story I heard was that Palmer's built the Typhoons for BBT to their exact specifications. I haven't confirmed this, but it seems to be the most accurate description from people I've talked to and emailed.

The BBT Typhoon I bought was #31, had a vertical bottle ASA, came with a 10" J&J brass barrel, and a double finger trigger. When I first took it out of the box I was simply amazed. It was a sweet looking gun. The first thing I noticed was the nickel plating. I had never seen a paintball gun with nickel plating and thought it looked great.

I had never shot a normal Typhoon before, so I didn't know how much more or less accurate the J&J barrel is compared to a fixed barrel. However, the J&J was pretty accurate at long distances, and dangerously accurate at about 50 feet.

If you want to buy a barrel for a BBT Typhoon, you're probably going to pay a little more or do a little work. Barrels for the BBT Typhoon have no threads. Mine looks like it's just a brass pipe. You will have to either special order a barrel or have a machine shop take the threads off of a barrel from another gun. Or if you have your own lathe (like I do :-) you can save yourself some cash and take the threads off yourself.

Just for fun I took my old stock 10" VM barrel and modified it. I took off the little lip that the retaining lug pushes against and I had to take off about .020" around the end that would go into the gun. I sanded off the paint and polished it with Brasso. It didn't have the shine that the J&J had since I was unable to polish it at the time, but it wasn't too bad. Accuracy wise it wasn't too bad either. The J&J was still better, but suprizingly it wasn't much worse considering it was a just a stock barrel.

Ironically, you could order a custom brass barrel from Palmer's. I don't know for sure if they make BBT Typhoon barrels, but I imagine they would do it. When I had the BBT Typhoon I was considering ordering a 10" barrel with spiral venting and having it matched honed to the gun. This almost defeats the purpose of the BBT Typhoon in a way though.

The Bad Boyz Toyz Typhoon is definitely a good 'gun. I never would have bought one if the price on mine wasn't so great though. I would recommend them for people who are barrel freaks or for people who like to have unique or rare guns. But overall I would recommend Typhoons in general to any one who would like a high quality, high performance paintball gun.

UPDATE- According to some comments on the POG message board, Palmer's produced the Typhoons to BBT's specs. BBT didn't actually to the modifying of those Typhoons. I find this a little odd personally since the BBT Typhoon I had didn't have the finesse that I've seen in other Palmer 'guns. The site rail being on crooked and the less than stellar brazing of the feed adapter to the gun body for example. It is feasible that they could have fallen off after production and were put back on by someone else, but I still wonder.

A BBT Typhoon with a DYE Barrel

Chris
POG 24
03/26/00