What weight BB do you use as a sniper? 0.36? 0.45? 0.48?

Different weights of course we know have different characteristics in flight. Lightweight bb’s at high velocity are unstable, heavier rounds move slowly but are more stable. And just to nip an old argument in the bud, all bb weights are affected when they clip vegetation – heavy ones will also deviate off course.

But, what weight are your BB’s actually? You might buy some Novritsch 0.49 and assume they’re all just 0.49 grams, right?

Wrong. But I’ll use a less extreme example to demonstrate…

Here’s my personal favourite. Longbow 0.45‘s, because I find 0.48 just a bit too slow. They’re consistent enough, but there’s a way to make them even better. You’d think they’d all be exactly the same weight, after all 0.45 of a gram is pretty accurate. Unfortunately due to manufacturing limitations, perfection just isn’t possible. The truth is, there’ll always be a slight variation in weight. How much variation will depend on the brand, but this is why you get “fliers” or groupings the size of a dinner plate at 50m.

We know that there’s a noticeable performance difference between 0.43 and 0.45, which is a weight difference of 0.02 of a gram – enough that you’d have to adjust your hop. And then 0.03g difference between 0.45 and 0.48. That’s how precise we are in airsoft. But as a sniper, I want to be even more precise than that because I’m trying to carefully land a single BB on target every time. I have a set of scales that measures to three decimal places (link here), meaning I can sort through the tub and group them together by a more exact weight. In this example, with a tub of 0.45g bb’s, they can technically weigh anything between 0.450 and 0.459 if it’s a good tub (I have seen a popular individuals’ brand weighed out between 0.46 and 0.48, in a 0.49 bottle). So, if a 0.02g variation is enough to reset your hop, then a 0.01g variance is enough to affect your accuracy and grouping.

What I mean by that is that if your first BB is 0.450g, and you miss the target and load the next shot, it could possibly be 0.459g and isn’t going to follow the same flight path. It’ll be close, but imagine that out to 80 metres trying to pick out a leg sticking out from behind cover. You’ll probably need a few more shots to get one that will follow the same flight path as the first shot so you can adjust correctly.

I’ve got some little glass jars that are marked with all the different weight variations (thankfully Longbow’s are all 0.45 so I don’t need too many). The BB’s get sorted out, and when I go to load a mag then it gets filled with identical weights. It doesn’t actually matter at this point how much variation you get within a tub because they’re being separated anyway, so you can “fix” a cheap brand with very inconsistent performance. But fewer jars in the bag is easier admin on game day. Though I’ll just pick up 2-3 jars and use whatever is in them.

It’s an old technique from the Airsoft Sniper Forum days; I don’t think many modern Airsoft players do it any more because they’ll be busy with video edits and stuff. And it might seem a little too much effort to sit and sort BB’s into weights. But, it’s this attention to detail, as well as determination and patience much as it is with camouflage, that makes the difference between a good sniper and a great sniper. Some can, some can’t.

Yes, I enjoy spending an evening sitting with a beer and weighing my balls. It’s one of life’s joys.

Along with knowing that that follow-up shot is going to hit home because I did my prep work.