The Power Behind Airsoft Guns

By Anthony Carter

Springs, electricity, and gas are the driving forces behind the various airsoft guns on today's market. These realistically designed firearms are produced in a variety of styles; pistols, machine guns, rifles, and shot guns. Even though these guns resemble real firearms, they are only able to fire projectiles that are 6-8mm in diameter. Below, we are going to tell you more about these guns...

There are a variety of qualities sought when choosing a specific airsoft firearm, whether it's a pistol, rifle, or any other style made today. These qualifications include battery life, magazine capacity, firing rate, range, and weight. Some other considerations might be the reliability of the piece, its size, the customization of it, or how realistic looking it is.

Spring Powered - The first guns for airsoft were dubbed "springers" and were single action guns that only fired one BB at a time. Between each shot, the gun would have to be re-cocked to be ready for the next firing.

Electric Powered Airsoft Guns- The most commonly used guns for airsoft today are generally called AEGs or Automatic Electric Guns. These have rechargeable batteries that control gearboxes used to propel the BBs out of the gun. Some of the early airsoft pistols manufactured have weak BB velocities, due to the lack of fitting a motor into the housing that is small enough to fit properly. These electric pistols tend to have a greater firing range than the gas pistols. There are four different capacities of magazines for AEGs; real, low, mid, or high. The real-capacity magazines are equivalent to the realistic steel counterpart, holding under 30 rounds. Low-capacity clips hold 30-80, mid-capacity contains 80-150, and high capacity magazines house 200-500 plus projectiles. Drum magazines are also available and will hold thousands of BBs at once.

Four magazine capacities are available for AEGs; real, low, mid, and high. For holding less than 30 rounds, the real-capacity magazines are used. As for the range of 30-80 BBs, the low-capacity version is used. When using 80-150 rounds, the mid-capacity is called for and high-capacity magazines are capable of holding 200-500 plus rounds. There are also drum magazines which allow the option of being able to hold thousands of BBs at one time.

They have also become more accessible because of their increase in quality and have changed to using "green gas". This environmentally friendly gas is propane mixed with small quantities of silicon lubricant and perfume.

Many manufacturers have recently started to produce adapters that will screw directly onto a propane tank, enabling the use of pure propane, which is cheaper than the green gas.

When using green gas, a recoil effect is caused when the gun is fired. The magazine in each pistol houses a storage cylinder with enough gas to propel 30+ BBs from the magazine, which adds to the realism of the airsoft firearm. With the gas being contained in the magazine itself, the gun can be loaded, unloaded, and fired similarly to the way a real semi-automatic pistol is. The typical gas airsoft hand gun magazine will hold 10 to 20 rounds. There are high capacity magazines with a winding mechanism that will hold up over 50 rounds.

Today a combination of aluminum and plastic are used, for both internal and external parts, to make realistic looking and light airsoft firearms. - 31373

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