[Junsei]

Dear Mods: Oh dear, my first post seems to be in the wrong forum. Can this live here or how do I move it to "Project Guns?"

So in Japan I need my rifle to fire at or less than 0.98 Joules muzzle energy. It seems that this is one of the major things that keeps the sniper population here pretty low.

We have snipers, but maybe they are firing a very nice, very quiet and suppressed, semi-auto AEG. I was walking dead out of the game and nearly stepped on a guy whose gun I couldn't hear more than 2 steps away, and later that day he took me out from the far bushes in another round. I'm starting to see my dreams of sitting out of AEG range happily pulling my bolt in the bushes (...erm.) crumble.

But the dream is not dead! I think I can turn this into a mean and silent (mid-) long-range killer with not too much capital investment and quite a lot of elbow grease.

I hope I am not out of line in starting this thread to serve as a 'naive' ground-up build log. Selfishly I need advice and help on tuning my gun, but as it seems it is under-served for information versus the clones and the VSR, I hope this will serve as a bit of a guide for others who choose the real Tokyo Marui as their L96, as well as for people who might be in Japan trying to get by as a bolt-action sniper on at-best 300 fps.

Here is the plan for the gun, which is bone stock at the moment and suffers an ailing hop-up. It has been fielded apparently six times according to the previous owner.
First time I've put this all down in a list so input would be greatly appreciated.

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TM L96 OD stock

The scope (Cheap bushnell) is actually quite nice but the eye relief isn't very good. I reversed the top rail so that I could move it as far back as possible without the objective bell hitting the rail, and took out as many butt pads as I could while still being able to sight comfortably when prone - a tricky balance

the bipod hasn't fallen apart yet. Yay China! Do y'all really use them?

TO DO (more or less in order)

* Clean, polish, and wax the inner barrel.
-- wash my BBs!

* Barrel Spacers

* Cure the hopup with a store-bought flat hop, or the stock bucking (both sitting on the desk here already)
-- Make my own nub from .... plastic eraser? Oh the white kind melts plastic! pink eraser?
-- source an R-hop or build up a J-hop type thing later on

* Attack the internals with shims and and teflon tape. Seal the bucking, tape all threads, silicon grease the o-rings

* Figure out how a sling is supposed to work with this monstrously long heavy thing. (>?<)

* Build or find a buttstock mag-pouch that fits the two extra magazines.

* Fit a lens shade to the scope objective.

* Consider filling the stock with expanding spray-foam

* Paint!

* Get an uprated spring and cut it down to exactly the maximum I can have.
-- install a metal bb loading fin at the same time.

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So those are the things that anybody should do I guess, and if I have missed something please make me aware with extreme prejudice. (It is getting late into the morning and sleep is but a memory) The aims of these are Accuracy, Accuracy, Accuracy, and stealth. However I have not put anything really pricy on that list, especially if I can mill up my own loading fin or get a deal on it.

Now we come to the Big Idea, that I hope will make it worth being a sniper here in Japan. Now I also approach an increasingly scary number of Yens. As I see it I have two general options:

Path A (conventional thinking?) is to mate a 500 mm Magic Box Miracle Barrel to the above assembly and be done with it. Else, I could get a slightly shorter miracle barrel and utilise the original outer barrel's overhang as a suppression cavity, or cut it down to make the rifle shorter.

Path B (Could it outperform the 'Miracle barrel' at this FPS?) is to get an inner barrel with the widest imaginable bore (ORGA Magnus 6.23 I presume?) and dump RIVERS of air through it with an uprated spring/piston/cylinder kit, as well as any internals which need to be strengthened.

My gut tells me Path B is the one to victory. My wallet tells me nothing interesting on that point. The results of the Miracle Barrel might only be attained at 400+ fps?

So I hope you folks are interested in this. I will start with the little stuff and put pics and progress in this post as I go, as well as try to incorporate pearls of wisdom you might have for me (you DO right? oh please!)

Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu
J.

 

[vanevery]

Start at the beginning.
Do not automatically think that making several changes to the gun equals massive improvement in performance.
Take the gun as is in stock condition and get actual data on what it can do with various ammo weights, bucking changes, and inner barrel changes.
Test out various hop-up mods such as Flat-hop and R-hop, but before you do, know exactly what you are getting with quality ammo and a standard drop-in bucking.

I always advocate owning at least one secondary barrel system:
Hop-up Unit, Inner Barrel, Bucking and Nub.
This way you can continue to experiment with hop-up mods with one barrel system, and have the second one for using drop-in buckings.

Time:
Never rush to accomplish goals or objectives with airsoft gun builds.
Never compete with other airsoft techs to be able to do what they can do.
Work within your skill level, and take things one step at a time.
When it comes to working on airsoft guns, slower is faster.
Conversely, the fastest way to fail and fall off the ladder of success is to skip steps.
So, build your foundation now, and the results will take care of themselves down the road.

Where to start:
Focus your attention on:
- Quality heavy ammo.
- Air Seal.
- Correct air volume balancing for your gun.

Typically, I go for max air volume for long range guns.
I am not convinced that is the best way to do it with a low power gun such as 1 joule and under.
This is an assumption on my end regarding air volume and 1 joule.
I have no science to back that up at the moment.
Just trying to drive the point home that if your cylinder is ported, you will be ok.
Just make sure to balance your air volume between the cylinder, inner barrel, and bb weight.

 

[Junsei]

Okay... <goes to google 'ported' cylinder>

Im on the same page with you as goes slow and incremental.

As I got it the gun shoots a 3 inch group at 10 yards. Hits 4 out of five soda cans at 15. Hop-up is wonky or nonexistent even when I max it out. At 30 or 40 m I can hit a large man size target but a pie-plate at 40 is a prayer.

I have some TM Bio .25 and some APS 'Super Grand Master' .29 ammo.

so first a clean barrel and new stock bucking, and then I will work on the basic sealing and whatnot.

but now the sun is way up so bed. Thanks!

<zzzzzzzzzz>

So i looked into ported cylinders. Is this applicable to a hand-cocked bolt-action spring gun? Everything I find talks about AEGs.
One of the VSR Build guides here mentions matching the cylinder compression volume to the barrel volume (the same calculation as is made for placing cylinder ports) but instead it is suggested to choose a barrel length / bore OR cylinder spec that gives the FPS you need, a ratio of <edit>2.2 to 3.2 units cylinder volume to 1 unit barrel volume
(http://www.airsoftsniperforum.com/41-vsr-rifles/6075-advanced-vsr-sniper-building-guide.html - scroll down to "TUNING THE CYLINDER...")

I can simply match my cylinder to my chosen barrel, or my barrel to the cylinders available. <edit> The math is indeterminate enough that it would need testing to get perfect. The link above deals with 6.03 mm barrels, whereas with a wide bore the amount of air riding out around a BB might change the proper ratio of cylinder to barrel volume significantly.

 

[Mental96]

You can port a spring cylinder just like an aeg but particularly to the AWS cylinder, its no good because there is limited volume already.

I would use a stronger spring+ shorter widebore barrel and then do math for bb weights for a sub-joule build, but I currently have no experience in this. Also really consider
r-hop. Makes trajectory much more stable and adds range if done properly.

Good luck with your project