One of the issues that players have with their airsoft guns is BBs curving at left, right, up, and down instead of going straight and thus affecting the accuracy. You may invest in great scopes and sights and improve your aiming skills, however, if there is something wrong with the fundamentals of the gun, it must be fixed first.
This problem often occurs on guns that have certain dysfunctions whether it was a matter of manufacturing or maintenance. Therefore, I will mention what you can do to fix it today and make your gun work as intended.
So, what are the possible causes of your gun not shooting straight?
Your gun is not shooting straight because of issues related to the inner barrel, hop-up system, bad BBs quality, extensions, or optics. You can fix any of these issues by detecting a problem and then fixing it using a proper technique that will be shown in this guide.
People sometimes panic and think that their gun is broken to the extent that it can no longer be fixed, but this is rarely the truth. You can fix it yourself if you put some time into it and this can be a great skill that may end up being very useful in the future.
If you play airsoft a lot and have friends who play it too, having some simple gun engineering skills often come in handy. The other solution is to detect a problem and if it happens to be too difficult to fix yourself, you can pass it to someone else.
However, I would not hurry passing it to someone else before I knew that the problem lies in something difficult, this is based on the fact that sometimes a simple fix solves the biggest problems and you will not know about it before you try it out on your own.
I will begin with the easiest solutions that you should try first and if they do not work then continue with others on the list. In order to test the difference, after every change shoot 10-20 BBs, and pay attention to BBs and how they land.
Let me present you with a few more questions to eliminate some simple potential causes, as players sometimes tend to complicate themselves instead of figuring out the problem wasn’t as big in the first place. If you do not find the following questions as a possible cause, just skip them.
The BBs should not bend at the sides but go straight no matter what
I must mention this first, there are levels to airsoft replicas. Some replicas are great, accurate, and long-lasting while some replicas (read cheaper ones without a brand to back them up) often lack quality and the quality can be seen in action.
So, simply some guns have better accuracy because the hop-up system, inner barrel, and similar inner mechanism are done better, the potential of such guns is high while some guns just do not have the potential. Therefore, some guns will naturally be less accurate and some guns dependent on a model will just behave differently, so you will have to learn the path of how the hop-up works and therefore adapt to it.
If your gun shoots BBs at a certain angle and you see them landing after 50 feet, adapt and calculate at which angle you have to shoot with the gun measuring the distance to hit the target.
Even the cheapest guns do not randomly and dramatically bend at sides and if this is the case then there is a problem to fix.
Do you use extensions on your gun?
In case you have any extension like a suppressor at the top of your gun, you should check this first and see whether it is aligned with the barrel or not. Remove it and shoot without it. If your gun starts to misbehave only with such extensions then you know where the problem is, extensions are not supposed to affect the functionality of a gun at all.
Are you sure that the sight is not a problem?
Another simple solution is maybe that the problem lies in the sight you are using, it is not uncommon for iron sights and scopes to make such issues when not properly installed or are broken, you think you aim at the right point but BBs travel at the side. You have to play with it and find the perfect alignment and it should fix a problem unless it is some manufacturing error on sights and scopes.
Airsoft BBs
The quality of BBs that you use can mean a day and night in the airsoft world. Cheap and poorly manufactured BBs can not only affect the accuracy of your gun but also jam it.
There are two important factors regarding BBs, the first one is the quality and the second one is the weight.
Start using high-quality BBs from proven brands
The way the BBs are manufactured means a lot, when a non-symmetrical, poorly designed BB (air bubbles, rough and non-polished body) gets propelled out of your gun it may alone affect the accuracy and make it seem that your gun does not work as intended. This is, however, due to their issues a gun may work perfectly but a BB is not aerodynamically designed or may travel at a bad angle inside the barrel.
If you have just bought your gun and it came with some „test“ BBs in a package and you have used those BBs, it may be the cause. Throw them away just as you would need to throw away any BB that does not have a brand behind it. Once you switch to quality BBs it may solve your problem.
Start using heavier BBs
You should use heavier BBs to improve accuracy on all guns that allow you to do so. This means that your gun needs to have enough FPS to support heavier BBs, otherwise you will have to stick to the lighter BBs.
If you want to know more about this then you should check my guide on heavy BBs and find the part that explains which weight you should use on your gun, this will help you tremendously increase accuracy.
What heavier BBs do is that they create more resistance against the air, thus making them more stable and countering the force that comes from winds. Playing airsoft on a perfect day without wind is a utopia and this is often a reason why BBs bend at sides at a certain distance, they get carried by wind due to poor weight and poor resistance.
Now it should make sense to you why this helps, High velocity that powers the heavy object results in a slower pace BB but also makes it resistant and harder on collision. Paintball has way fewer issues with this because the paintball ammo is heavier and hurts more than any airsoft BB on the market.
Inner barrel
There are a few problems that may occur with the inner barrel, one is extremely easy to fix and the other one will require a bit more work. Inner barrels are a very important part of every airsoft gun, so you can’t skip their role.
Dirty inner barrels
Proper maintenance is a must with airsoft replicas but even the newer guns that have not been used extensively might need some cleaning. If this is a problem your gun is experiencing then you are about to fix it quite soon.
You will need a cleaning rod, some soft cloth, and preferably rubbing alcohol if you do not have alcohol then warm water can be used too, but I believe that alcohol does the job better and you should have it at home, especially for long-term gun maintenance.
Some players use silicone oil, but I would avoid silicone oils and any paper because the oil will make dirt stick to the sides of a barrel and paper may get stuck inside.
Put the soft cloth/patch on the rod and put it in the barrel, twist it until you feel that you have touched the nozzle, and twist it back up, repeat this a couple of times.
I would also replace the soft cloth/patch with another dry one and finish cleaning with it, I think that this is especially important if you are using oil because you do not want your inner barrel to be full of it.
Proper alignment
This can be tricky if you have not ever played with the inner parts of a gun, but nevertheless can be done on your own. If you do not want to do this on your own but have tried other techniques and nothing worked then you can pass it to someone else to fix it for you.
Sometimes the inner barrel is not exactly fixed and aligned, the whole story begins in the hop-up unit, the BBs must travel through the inner barrel and leave the gun once they reach the very top of it. When all mentioned components are not properly aligned the BBs may go diagonal or bend at the sides.
You can detect this problem simply by looking through the nozzle, if it seems to be non-symmetrical, there you have your problem.
However, even if it seems to be perfectly symmetrical, sometimes it is not possible to detect it with your naked eye because the problem may be deeper at the spot where the hop-up unit matches the gearbox.
One thing that we know is that we must make it all centered if we want to get the best of the gun’s accuracy potential.
To fix this you will need to get the hop up and inner barrel out of the gun and apply some techniques to it in order to make it stable. You will need either duct tape or super glue.
If you choose to use duct tape then you should wrap it around the inner barrel starting from the point where it touches the hop-up unit, it must fit well inside the barrel and what you are trying to achieve is to make it centered and stiff, so it does not move when you shoot.
If you choose super glue then you will have to put it right where it gets into the hop-up unit and make it stick to it nicely.
I will share a video where a guy uses advanced techniques to fix his inner barrel because it used to wobble inside the outer barrel and therefore the accuracy was terrible. You do not have to do things like this guy did but it will make it more obvious what I just said if you take a look at it.
Broken inner barrel
In case the inner barrel is bent, deformed, or damaged then there is probably nothing you can do without some serious tools. You will have an easier time just buying a new one or letting the repair masters do their job.
Hop up system
Hop-up is something that you can easily adjust on your own and as a matter of fact, all you need to do is to read from the gun’s manual and see the instructions. If the BB bents at sides probably do not have to do much with regular hop-up adjustment, however when hop-up is not adjusted properly you may see lower accuracy at distances.
After adjusting the hop-up and seeing whether it helped or not, if it did not work you can also inspect the hop-up rubber and see whether it is damaged or dislocated.
On older guns, the rubber may get worn and therefore loses its functionality, on newer guns, it is probably not the case but it still may be incorrectly placed and in which case you should disassemble the hop-up system and replace the rubber with the newer one or just correctly place it in the right spot.
Conclusion
I hope that one of these techniques above helped you fix this annoying problem, in case the problem is still present and you are not satisfied with your gun’s accuracy consider investing in a better one that will vouch for itself. In case the gun now works fine but you are still not satisfied with its accuracy you can also consider getting a better one or upgrading it for accuracy. Not all guns can be upgraded but some certainly can and you should make research about it.