Beginner Airsmith's Toolkit - with links

The first few things here I consider essential; the rest are things that just make your teching much easier. They’re more good examples than guaranteed bests at what they do, so feel free to look around, your local hardware store WILL have most of this stuff at a comparable price to online. If anyone has any suggestions please go ahead and post them, I'm always looking for tools that'll make things easier.

• Screw Driver Set I have seen very few screws (on airsoft guns) this set does not have the right bits for. Torx, hex, Philips, flat, its all there. Very important that you use the right size/shape bit for the job or you WILL strip your screws which leads to very tedious problems. Over tightening is almost always bad.

• Dremel It’s a high speed hand held rotary tool. Your new best friend for making parts of different brands play nice together. It can swiss cheese a piston. It can radius a gearbox. It can get rid of those pesky two-piece hop up units. It can correct angle of engagement issues by grinding metal piston teeth. It has many, many uses, and you won’t get far looking up how-tos without seeing someone using one.

• Shims They sell them at any airsoft store worth its salt.

• Lube moving parts need it, everywhere has got it.

• Teflon Tape aka Plumber's Tape used in a variety of mods, mostly air seal/compression related, but also helps keep barrels tightly in place.

• Soldering Iron Gas or electric work, gas tends to get hotter faster and have more controllable temp settings and are thus easier to work with in my book, you can get gas canisters for them at your local hardware store cheap and they last quite a while. That one in the link has done me fine. Soldering technique is a post in and of itself, youtube has plenty of examples. The most important pointers I can give are that you pre-heat and pre-tin both surfaces you mean to join. You will also need: Rosin Core Solder. You won’t absolutely need but you do want: Acid-Free Flux paste. Paste makes it so the solder actually sticks to where you want instead of beading up and rolling off, but you don’t absolutely need it.

• Deans Connectors A simple way to upgrade your gun’s rounds per second. They pretty much only come standard with high quality guns/batteries. Make sure you wire guns male, batteries female. Will require several other tools in order to stick on your gun, namely the soldering iron, and a wire cutter/stripper combo will make your life easier.

• Multi-Angle Vice Pretty self explanatory. Helps hold things in place, can tilt and rotate which makes things much quicker and easier, clamps on just about any surface with an edge. The supplementary helping hands I use to go with it. Very useful for holding battery wires and connectors and making sure they stay straight while you solder, can be clamped in the vice.

• Needle Nose Pliers: There will come a time when you need them. Thinner is better, generally, you may need to snake them in a hole to grab a screw.

• Organizer Helps keep all that stuff and your spare parts from being in one big chaotic mess.

• Sharpie and Zip lock baggies: No way you’re going to remember all those little spare parts you have and where they came from in a week. Label them. You will thank yourself later.

• Superglue AKA CA or Cyanoacrylate , for hop up mods and sorbopads

• Shrink tubing can be found almost anywhere; the most important part of working with electrics is not touching the positive and negative wires together. Tubing keeps the solder protected and prevents exposed wires from accidentally touching and destroying your gun/battery (YES, it can do that)