How a cheap airsoft spring pistol works

Hey all, we have all seen these, and a lot of us may have started out in airsoft with an inexpensive to cheap spring pistol. And by cheap, we mean those ones you sometimes get for a buck at flea markets. Often you are pretty sure you can throw the bbs by hand further, but hey, at least you got out there and had fun and got into playing airsoft, right?

Ok, lets look at the internals on a dirt cheap, very low power springer. This bit of information can give you a pretty good idea how better spring pistols work as well, and if you jump to the end of the article, you might just find a use for some of these lower power springers you probably have laying around somewhere in the bottom of your airsoft bag.

First, lets have a look at our springer broken down. In our image, the parts of the pistol are as follows:

A – molded plastic pistol body
B – magazine
C – slide
D – power spring
E – piston
F – cylinder with integral nozzle/clip stripper
G – bucking/airseal
H – barrel (orange plastic, 6.09 mm here)
I – return spring

Most spring pistols are built very much like this one, with some changes in the barrel, hop up/bucking, nozzle and cylinder/piston size.

Let's go over these parts, one by one and comment on noteworthy things about them.

The pistol body (A) is cast of plastic (some are clear), and has the trigger assembly, the magazine catch, the bb loading ramp and several other parts molded into it. In most springers, this is cast in two parts and is either held together with screws or glued together. The magazine (B) slides up into the pistol body (A) and is locked in with the mag catch (not shown). This magazine has a slider pushed upwards by a spring to help feed the bbs in the magazine up into the feed ramp. A necked in area at the top of the magazine keeps all the bbs from spraying out at once when the spring is pushing upwards. A gap between these necked in areas is where the clip stripper passes through on each cocking to push a bb up the ramp in the body, into place against the airseal (G), then the nozzle on the front of the cylinder (F) pushes it tight making the pistol ready to fire.

Moving up to the upper half of the pistol, the power spring (D) is nested inside the middle of the piston (E) which slides inside the cylinder (F). This entire assembly is put into the top of the pistol body, and covered by the slide when the replica is assembled. When the slide is pulled back, a set of connections inside the slide pull the piston back, compressing the power spring. Once the slide is pulled fully back, the sear in the trigger assembly catches the bottom of the piston and holds it in place until the trigger is pulled. As the slide moves forward, the clip stripper on the bottom of the cylinder catches a bb from the top of the magazine, and pushes it up the loading ramp and against the airseal (G). Here the nozzle seats tightly against the back of the bb, and the pistol is ready to fire. When the trigger is pulled, the power spring pushes the piston forward inside the cylinder, compressing all the air inside and directing it through the nozzle to push the bb through the flexible rubber airseal and down the barrel (H). In our cheap springer, the barrel is bright orange molded plastic, and projects outside the tip of the slide acting as the safety tip required on all airsoft guns sold in the US. The return spring is compressed as the slide is in its resting position, helping to keep the slide assembly locked tightly against the bb to help keep the airseal tight.

In our cheap springer, the volume of air inside the cylinder is fairly small, while on some springers this volume can be quite large. The more air the power spring can compress, the faster and harder the replica will throw a bb of a given weight.

Essentially, all airsoft replicas work on this compressed air system of some sort, with the more powerful spring rifles using a larger cylinder volume and a stronger spring to push more air down the barrel faster. An AEG (automatic electric gun) adds a battery driven motor and gear system to pull back the piston instead of using your hand to cock the replica for each shot, and these more complex replicas will be covered in another article here on the roadcrew review!

So that about covers how these cheap springers work, lets see what else you can do with them instead of just using them as a standard low powered airsoft pistol replica.

If you cock the pistol, and pour a couple extra bbs down the barrel then pull the trigger, you will get a shower of bbs over a small area. None of them will go anywhere near as far as a single bb, since there is no extra power pushing more mass down the barrel. However... here is where it gets fun. You can tie one of these pistols to a sapling with zip ties, run a trip wire back from the trigger and around a branch, then across the trail and make an effective short range “trap”. These mini-shotgun traps are good if located in an area where someone will likely go down a trail or narrow area, and there is a lot of brush on either side to help hide the ziptied pistol. You might even want to camo paint a few of your cheap springers for just this use!

You can also use these as back up replicas, for when your main replica runs out of ammo or your battery fails. They don't have a lot of range, so you better be close! Or, depending on how your games run, you might be able to carry one of these as a hidden back up for when you are captured. (Some games don't allow this – check with your refs!).

You can also leave a cheap springer laying out in front of your position, hoping one of the players on the other team will stop to pick it up (ie, bait). Granted, if you find someone elses' gear on the field, you should carry it back to the muster point for lost n found, so this might be a move you may not want to use.

So there are a couple uses of a cheap springer, and now you know how they work so feel free to misuse this information and pass it along!