Sear's Hobby Page

Our aegs basically use air to push a bb out the barrel. Can't get any simpler than that.

Yet there are times when we have our guns chronographed, we see a variance in the measurement giving us a smile, a shock of delight, or downright disappointment. And the order of those emotions also vary depending on what we see in the LCD screen first.

Ever since I started opening and upgrading my own guns, I always wondered what actually happened inside our gearboxes to understand how it works and how it affects the results we see when we measure them.

The thing about air is that it is a force of nature we need to work with and not something we can really control. True, with the correct cylinder-to-barrel ratio, coupled with a good spring, shimming, and the so-called gunsmith's magic (I wish I had this!), we can get the performance we seek.

I had a very informative discussion about this topic about a year ago with another player. Based on our talk, we learned that air moving in a barrel does not move like air that was compressed, rather it is air that is pushed by a spring and piston. Its movement can be likened to a wave or waves hitting the shoreline of a beach. Think of the beach as your inner barrel. the depth, and the width of this beach will influence how fast and how large the wave can be.

Now think of the inner barrel of your gun. Since the air is not compressed, it moves like a wave and the length and inner diameter can influence how it moves. This explains why some barrels give the bb high fps and range. Now I know that there are other factors but let's just focus on the barrel itself. There have been studies in the past regarding how a barrel's length can increase or decrease fps. One such study was made by a Japanese enthusiast who goes by the callsign Gunner Engineer. His website is unfortunately not working now (no page is displayed when I search using his old url). His findings show that the right barrel length can yield the best performance regardless of whatever spring you use (Out of respect I cannot show the saved web page until I get permission from the owner but I will type out his findings on my next blog).

So what have I learned so far? Air cannot be changed but we can the "path" in which it travels more efficient and understanding this can also help us in another department: the cost. Without having to spend so much, we can optimize what we already have to get maximum performance. To sir Zen Taurus, if you chance upon my blog, like you, I am still deep in meditation.