Community Spotlight: Sniper Mechanic

When passion for your hobby, technical enthusiasm, love of sniper rifles and an insatiable pursuit for knowledge come together, it results in one of the most informative blogs and respected sniper community members being born.

With the first blog entry being dated 11th November, 2016, www.snipermechanics.com has fully loaded timeline since it's inception, with an average of 3 articles per month. Headed up by the UK based 1 man team that is Dan "Sniper Mechanic" Mech, Dan is a living wiki on the context of long range airsoft tools, typically bolt action rifles. As an airsofter of 12 years, his technical knowledge on bolt action rifle platforms, is to our knowledge, unmatched in the airsoft community.

Ranging from the TM VSR, Tanaka PCS, Ares Amoeba, APS2 and HPA platforms, to name a few, Dan's experience has grown to having worked on every platform currently available on the market; so much so that his experience has became so highly regarded among fellow players that before long requests were coming in for paid custom rifle builds. From these requests, Sniper Mechanic launched forward not just as an individual alias, but as a recognized brand that provided a trusted technical and customization service that produced some of the best "package" rifles in the scene. With paid requests coming in, Dan was able to continue to finance the Sniper Mechanics blog, allowing the purchase of new parts and platforms to expand his technical knowledge and continue giving back to the community.

Enter: Teching Tuesday Live!

Along side his blog articles, Dan recognized that teching guides are notoriously hard to demonstrate through written word and knew that recording a demonstration would naturally lead to follow up questions that would be better addressed in a live format. With a live show launched and scheduled on Tuesday nights where possible, it only solidified Dan's expertise as a technician as he regularly performed the airsofters equivalent of "open heart surgery" before a live and inquisitive audience. Whilst the Teching Tuesday shows still occurs, Dan tends deliver the same experience in shorter, more accessible live streams that suits his availability through Instagram and Facebook.

It was from these combined interactions with the community that Dan saw a missing entry in his wiki pages, the need for high powered rifles without the encumbrance of heavy springs; a problem that anyone who has tried to rack a M170 spring powered bolt would know. This lead Dan on to the start of what would eventually be known as the W.A.S.P (Weight Adjustable Silent Piston) project. The W.A.S.P would be a self engineered upgrade part that utilized the phenomena known as Joule Creep to allow players to reach a desired rifle energy limit commonly achieved with high rated springs, whilst using a lower rated spring for easy of use. After 2 years of development, the first W.A.S.P units were delivered to players for the VSR platform, shortly followed by support for the SRS platform. The results of these achievements are entirely deserving of their own article, but suffice to say, the W.A.S.P is a tangible embodiment of Sniper Mechanics expertise, knowledge and passion for the bolt action platform, and everything Dan stands for as an individual.

Lethal knowledge

Naturally, his ability as a bolt action guru is not limited to the workbench, and when thrown out in to the woods, the Sniper Mechanic completely and whole heartily takes on the "Sniper" part of his namesake. As a competing member of the Sniper Ops community (which we introduced in a previous article), he has attended demanding 24 hour events, milsims, skirmishes both local and overseas. In these events, Dan has shown his capability as a master of the tools he has intellectually and technically mastered, and their application in the sport itself. Dan continues to be an active player, with an active role in both in the Sniper Ops and bolt action / stealth orientated community as a whole.

In more recent days, Dan now manages the UK retail operations for Skirmshop (Skirmshop UK), alongside the Sniper Mechanics brand / blog. Although it's afforded him less time to focus on the blog, Dan remains as passionate as ever for the hobby and the Sniper Mecahnics blog, and his involvement with Skirmshop has opened up opportunities to more easily acquire new parts and expand his knowledge base to continue providing his expertise to the community.

Blog brother in arms

In summary, we hope that our brief spotlight has managed to highlight the excellent qualities of Sniper Mechanic, as a person, as a blog and as a brand. We truly feel a kinship with Sniper Mechanic, for we see ourselves in his purpose and passion for what is a truly niche aspect of the Airsoft sport and owe much of what we do here at OMMK as inspired by Dan's efforts. We hope that you might see the similarities between our blogs for yourself.

You can follow Dan and his endeavors through the following media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SniperMechanic/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/snipermechanics/ Skirmshop UK: https://www.skirmshop.co.uk/