AR's For Dummies A Basic Understanding of the Platform

hey everybody how's it going it's a daily shooter and today I want to talk about the basics of an AR what are the different components what are they called how do they function how do they work together and so forth the reason I want to make this video is because there's a lot of new people to the market right now people who just don't know much about them but for whatever reason they want to get into it there's a reason like political reasons a potential ban coming down in the future also there's a financial reason right now you can find a lot of a ARS that are very budget oriented and so it allows a lot more people to get in on something that maybe they just couldn't afford in the past but for whatever reason they're picking up their first one and they want to know how it works they want to have a better understanding of it which is always good it's a good idea to have a better understanding of exactly what you're using it's going to help you with safety it's gonna help you with cleaning and maintenance and so it's best to learn every single part so that's what we're gonna do today we're gonna go over this one right here and we're gonna take it to the table and I'll give you guys a closer look at the things that I'm talking about [Music] now while most ARS are the same functionally you may come across a couple different minor variations out there that could throw you off a little bit there's companies that try and change things to maybe come up with a solution to something there's companies that change things for aesthetic reasons just you know as a sales tactic or whatever but one of the things you could come across is a different charging version so for instance this is our charging handle in the back right here we go and pull this back and we let it go in order to charge the next round out of the magazine there's some companies that will get rid of that and they'll put a charging handle on the side and that's a solution that works good for some people so some companies are making those if you see something that just doesn't look the same as on the wall or maybe you don't have a basic understanding of it just ask the person behind the counter I'm sure they'd be happy to explain it to you because again they're trying to sell you one of these and if you can't make a decision up between the two then obviously it's gonna be a little bit harder for them and they might miss out on the sale so ask them I'm sure they'd be happy to tell you now in today's video again remember this is just a 101 this is a remedial course on what this stuff is so there's a chance that I could miss something or a variation of something and that's something you just want to learn as as time goes on so we're gonna go ahead and start from the very very back right here and work our way forward on what all of these different parts are starting off with our stock okay so the stock this is one of those parts where there's just a million variations of this specific piece right here you can find rifle length fixed stocks adjustable stock side folding stocks under folders stocks I mean you name it you can find pretty much anything that you want out there but again this is just the basic so we're gonna cover the two basic stocks that you're gonna see out there and what some of their parts are now this rubber piece on the back right here this black piece this is your butt pad the back of the stock is going to be the butt of the stock now again this is just 101 stuff right but so we're gonna go through it so this right here is the butt pad this is the butt of the stock and some stocks that are out there right now don't even have a pad on the back and they're just fully polymer in the back of the stock is just a polymer portion that's still the butt of the stock this top piece right here which I've heard referred to a lot as the cheek well this is not actually called a cheek well this is actually called the comb the comb is where you would apply your cheek well that's where your cheek is actually going to rest on the comb so again this is the butt this is the of the stock this one right here happens to be an adjustable stock it's also referred to as a collapsible stock both would pretty much be right because this thing does attend it does collapse so basically what we have here is a stock that will ride up and down the buffer tube will go over the buffer tube in just a second here it will ride up and down the buffer tube but it's got this little lever this lever it forces on this pin right here which lifts another pin that's on the inside of this stock that will index with holes that are on the bottom of the buffer tube and when you find the position that you want you simply release this rear switch and it will lock into place now I've actually seen companies refer to this type of stock as a five position or six position stock which is not the case this stock does not determine how many positions there are on the rifle it is the buffer tube and how many positions there are on the buffer tube itself that will determine how many spaces you have whether it be four or five or six spaces to lock the stock in to now with a fixed stock or a rifle length stock you're looking at a stock that does not move it simply attaches to the rifle itself and it just sits there doesn't move at all now as we take a look at this buffer tube without the stock on it there's a few different things that you want to know in order to better understand what you're working with the first one is that there are a couple different lengths of buffer tube the one that you're looking at right here is a carbine length there is also a rifle length which is a little bit longer now this carbine length tube is set up to accept an adjustable stock and we know this because under the cylindrical portion you'll see this extension right here that is where the stock locks into if you want to know how many positions it is all you have to do is flip it over and count those little holes those little notches right there that will tell you how many positions you're going to get out of whatever stock that you install on this with a rifle length stock a lot of times it's just this cylindrical portion right here you're not going to have this extension it's going to come back a little bit further and that's where you're going to install your fixed stock in a lot of cases a fixed stock is going to install directly into the back of the buffer tube itself and that's what's gonna lock everything into place it will not have this extension right here if you try to install an adjustable stock onto a rifle length fixed stock version buffer tube it's obviously not gonna have anywhere to lock in and it's just gonna slide right off the back so doesn't work there's also a couple different dimensional differences between a couple different things you might hear as well like commercial versus milspec you guys are going to see commercial versus milspec most rifles these days will come with a milspec buffer tube but there are still some out there and some aftermarket parts that are commercial now when you're talking about commercial versus milspec what you're talking about is diameter essentially a commercial buffer tube is going to be wider than a milspec buffer to you but milspec buffer tube is going to be a little bit more slender and so the problems that you face there is if you have a commercial buffer tube and you have a mil spec sized stock and you try and fit it on it's not gonna fit on because it's gonna be too wide for the stock unless the stock is a little bit out of spec in which case you might be able to hammer it on there nonetheless it's not gonna slide freely now you can put a commercial stock onto a mil spec buffer tube that's because it's a little bit smaller but it'll have a little bit of wiggle and rattle and it's just not going to fit right so you want to make sure that if you have a commercial buffer tube you put on a commercial stock and so forth now our buffer tube is held into place by what is known as a castle nut the castle nut is this piece right here it's called a castle nut because obviously it looks like a castle tower because it has these square notches that are cut out into it and that is for an armors wrench to be able to get in there and turn in this is a standard armours wrench right here and you can see that it has you know different spots on it different teeth that you could use in order to get them in there go like this and then you'd be able to take that thing off but this is what's called your castle nut now the castle nut pushes up on an end plate the end plate is what holds a couple other small detent sand springs in which we'll talk about in just a second when we talk about the lower but the castle nut is simply turned to a proper specification that holds what the end plate is and there's different end plates as well you can see right here this is a phase five qdm plate the standard end plate was just this flat plate that sits in the very very back right here of the upper receiver this one right here this face five actually has a QD spot on it so that you can attach like slings and stuff like that okay so that's why this one looks a little bit different than when you might be used to seeing but again there's different variations of end plates from different companies and different variations of Castle nuts as well companies like strike industries make castle that look a little bit different but they do the same thing simply tightens down and that's what holds on this buffer tube right here okay so let's move ourselves a little bit forward here and talk about some of the external features that we can see now the first one we're going to talk about is the dust cover okay obviously this is your dust cover right here it's got a little pin on the top that indexes with the upper receiver and when that little pin goes beyond the upper receiver it locks the door shut so this right here is your dust cover this is going to be your magazine release now the magazine release is depressed on this side but the actual mechanism that releases the magazine is located on the other side so this is the back end of your magazine release right here when you push that button on the other side it pushes out this release right here and allows the magazine to drop free now this right here has a little notch on the inside that is going to correspond with a notch on the magazine when those two line up they lock up and so removing this from the notch on the magazine it was is what makes it fall now this right here is going to be your bolt catch slash bolt release so the bolt is gonna be the bulk carrier group on the inside we'll talk about that in just a second but the bolt is what cycles back and forth right here this actually catches that bolt because it works in conjunction with the magazine to force this lever up right here and when this lever is forced up and out that's what is going to hold that bolt from moving forward so again this works in conjunction with the magazine to hold the bolt back now the way that you would work this is essentially just by pushing the button if you want to go ahead and let that go home or if you don't have a magazine installed and you still want to lock that bolt back all you have to do is use the charging handle right here pull this all the way to the back hold down the bottom and then release and that will lock your bolt into place now on this side as well you can see that we have our safety selector so our safety selector is going to be right here and you're going to see that there are just a couple different positions that we can use when this is a standard ar-15 now if this was something that was meant for the military you would have full auto auto but since this is not military-grade contrary to everything that you hear this does not have anything like that so all you would do is simply put it in the back safe position or in the down to fire position there are some that go straight down some that go at a 45-degree angle and you know different variations like ambidextrous and so forth but they all have pretty much the same function now one thing you want to keep in mind you saw me trying to push this back and it didn't go the reason it didn't go is because the rifle is not charged if it's not charged okay if this is not set back and the trigger is in the proper position then this right here will not go back into the safe position it will stay down here in the fire position once that trigger is down and will allow this to move into that safe position otherwise it's just gonna basically stay there another thing that we have on the exterior right here is going to be our trigger guard which I know might be a little bit difficult to see I apologize but your trigger guard sometimes trigger guards are interchangeable like this one is right here which has a Magpul trigger guard on it and sometimes they are actually built into the lower receiver this whole section right here is the lower receiver which we'll go over later as well sometimes they are integrated into that lower receiver and then sometimes they're interchangeable each one will have some type of pin or screw or something like that that holds it into place so we have that now the next thing that we're gonna want to take a look at on the exterior right here is gonna be our takedown pin in our pivot pin this is another section where I hear people kind of give it the wrong name because they'll call these both takedown pins these are not both takedown pins the one that's located in the rear right here that's gonna be your takedown pin you would push on that and that's how you would just essentially take the rifle down and be able to remove the components that you need in order to clean it this one right here on the very front this one pivots when this one is open so this one right here is called the pivot pin so front pivot the back is going to be your takedown okay so we went over some of the external features of the firearm now let's go ahead and focus on the lower receiver this is what's called the lower receiver a stripped lower receiver is something that doesn't have anything in it it is simply this metal portion right here that comes up around the back that would be a stripped low receiver a complete lower receiver is something that already has all of these components pre-installed this is obviously going to be your pistol grip right here this is what people refer to as the magwell and then the magwell is obviously where you insert your magazine now this has a lot of moving parts okay the lower receiver has a lot of moving parts on it obviously we have these pins right here we have the takedown pin and the pin the pivot pin and the takedown pin are both held in place by small Springs and detents that are located in the lower receiver there is a small detent right here in the very front of the lower receiver that indexes with the back you'll see a little notch in the back of the front pivot pin right here it will index with that and that's what holds everything into place there is a spring that you'll be able to see sometimes - a little hole right here that will hold that detent against that pivot pin on the back right here there is another spring and detent that's actually held into place by what we had previously talked about which is the end plate there is a spring that is held into place by the end plate that spring puts tension again on the back takedown pin and it indexes with a slot on the back of that pin and that's what keeps it from coming out and keeps a little bit of pressure against it now on the lower receiver you're also going to find your trigger so this is a trigger or what's also known as a fire control group the fire control group consists of all of these different components so we have our trigger we have our hammer and then on the inside you're gonna see a bunch of different springs and disconnects and stuff like that ok you don't really need to concern yourself with too many details if you want to look up exactly how a trigger works you can do that but again this is just 101 and we're not trying to confuse you about things so the lower receiver is going to contain and control group right here and it all kind of sits in this little fire control pocket that's on the inside now on some lower receivers on the back right here where you see that it's just there's nothing in there in this back section sometimes there will be a little screw that will allow you to put tension on the upper receiver most of the time if you're looking at just a standard milspec it's not going to have that in it at all it's just gonna have that blank space right there but if you see a little screw that's gonna be for tensioning now that works with our pistol grip because inside this pistol grip right here there's gonna be a screw and a washer and that will actually go up into the lower receiver and let me see if I can find one here that I had laying around to show you what I was talking about which I don't have any more around here okay but anyway there is a section right here kind of a triangle section that this grip goes onto and it has a hole in it and it allows you to put this on and and kind of hold everything together and again that's what might come through the back here the grip is also an important part because this holds another spring and detent into the lower receiver there is a detent that holds our safety selector in and a spring that partially indexes with both the lower receiver and the grip itself so the sprit the detent will be on top that will actually index with the safety the spring itself comes down through the lower receiver and into the grip when you take the grip off you'll actually see a small hole in there and that is going to be for that little spring so essentially that's your low receiver okay that's a complete lower receiver with the mag release to take down the pivot pins to grip the safety your fire control group the magwell your trigger guard kay that's for the most part what that consists of now what also works with the lower receiver other than the fact that this buffer tube stock and everything else attaches to the low receiver you're going to have your buffer spring your buffer and another detent and spring that actually hold the buffer and spring assembly in there so you can see right here this is our buffer it rides in our buffer tube it has a spring behind it and then you'll see that little detent right there that keeps everything from flying out in order to remove that all you have to do is simply push down on that little detent and it should put enough you know take off enough pressure at least from that buffer to allow it to come out but keep in mind that this is spring loaded and that when you push that down it's going to want to come out at sometimes kind of high speed so for safety's sake keep your finger right here you know in front of that little detent when you're pushing it down to keep that from flying away from you so you have our buffer at the buffer spring now the buffer provides a little bit of tension for the bolt carrier group to come back and forward and that's basically what pushes your bolt carrier forward we'll talk about the bolt carrier and how it works with the buffer spring and the buffer tube in just a second here but it's good to know that that little detent is right there and then again you have your buffer and your buffer spring located inside here and everything kind of works together as one unit so let's go ahead and take this out of the way and we'll talk about the upper receiver okay so here is our upper receiver now when it comes to upper receivers there's a couple different things that you can look at as well there are stripped uppers a stripped upper is essentially just this section right here so this is our handguard okay that runs the length of the barrel that's our handguard and where it stops is essentially we're the upper receiver begins there are some threads right here that we'll talk about in a little bit that's for the barrel nut to hold the barrel to the upper receiver but if you were to buy a stripped upper receiver it's not going to have any of this stuff on it it's just gonna be this metal portion right here and just all this stuff you're talking about a complete upper receiver it will have already the forward assist and some other options that are pre-installed for you a stripped upper receiver most of the times won't even have a dust cover installed you'll have to install a dust cover as well and there's some springs that work with this here that put tension on the upper receiver and the dust cover that allow it to flip open but nonetheless that'll be a stripped or you have a complete with a barrel and so forth so let's go and talk about the upper receiver the upper receiver is what houses your bolt carrier group and your charging handle okay so we have our bolt carrier group here and our charging handle I'll take those out in just a second because we're going to talk about them so that is what houses it in the top of the upper receiver right here is where the charging handle rides so when you grab this charging handle and you pull back it is actually in this upper portion of your upper receiver right here and then the buffer spring and the buffer itself are what forces everything back into place now this is a non reciprocating charging handle and I'll take the charging handle and out of here in just a second for you the charging handle which is located in the upper receiver actually has a little hook on it you might be able to see that little hook right there that hook indexes with the upper receiver and that's what keeps this from coming back when the bolt carrier group is moving so it's called non reciprocating if it was reciprocating it would mean that the charging handle would actually come out when the bolt carrier moves and come back with the bolt carrier it means basically it's connected to the bulk air and it would go back and forth so this one right here being non reciprocating means that it's gonna stay in the exact same position and you can see if we take a look at the inside of our upper receiver that is where again our bolt carrier group and our charging handle are and this is the bottom of our bolt carrier group right here now a couple more parts on our upper receiver one of them is going to be the forward assist which you can see right here not all upper receivers have a forward assist but I like a forward assist it's better to have it and not need it then not have it and then need it the forward assist is what helps your bolt carrier group go all the way back into battery battery means that it's basically locked into the upper receiver right here and everything's ready to fire so if it stops just slightly short you can go ahead and give a slam against the forward assist right here and it will push the bulk here in it does that because the bolt carrier group has these little notches right here there is a little tooth that's located at the bottom of your forward assist that tooth comes out it grabs on to one of these little marks that you see on the side of the bolt carrier group and when it locks into that that's what allows you to push it forward so essentially what you're doing is you're pushing this button and pushing forward the bolt carrier group now another thing you're gonna see on your upper receiver is going to be the shell deflector so after a cartridge is spent and it's coming back it's going to deflect off of this piece right here and it's going to help it go in a different direction other than your face so if you start seeing a lot of brass buildup here that's why these empty cases are coming out they're hitting this deflector and it's doing its job and deflecting them away from you now on the upper receiver right here you're also going to see that we have a couple holes on these extensions down at the bottom that is what locks in with our pivot pin and our takedown pin the pivot pin and takedown pin go through those holes and then lock the upper receiver into the lower receiver now because of YouTube's policies I am not allowed to show you guys exactly how to take apart anything or put anything back together so I have to take everything apart and then you know cut into the video in order to show you guys the different components that's why I just can't pull anything out because YouTube just has a hissy fit over this stuff but anyway what I went ahead and did was I took out the bolt carrier group from the inside you can see this one is a little bit dirty right here so the bolt carrier group consists of a bunch of different parts okay now in the bolt carrier group is where you're gonna find your firing pin the firing pin if you go ahead and look down the bottom of the bolt carrier group and I know it's kind of hard to see you will see a firing pin down on the inside of that bolt carrier group also as part of the bolt carrier group you're going to see that we have our gas key the gas key is located on the very top right here this is actually what indexes with the gas system that is part of the barrel that allows this thing to go back and forth because it's the gases that force upon this in order to make everything function so again the gas key works with the gas system now on the side right here we have a couple different vents these are gas vents that are located on the side right here you're going to see a pin okay this pin is on both sides you can see the biggest portion is going to be on the opposite side of where the dust cover is and this pin right here holds that firing pin in place now when you hear about bolt carrier group that's because it's a group of different things we have the bolt carrier itself which is just this main housing again we have the gas key and then we have the actual bolt itself the bolt itself is located on the very front right here and that simply comes out by taking out this pin which holds the bolt itself in and you can see that as we move the bolt inside of the carrier itself that pin moves as well now on the bolt carrier group itself you're going to see that there are these little spots right here kind of looks like a star pattern right see the star pattern that goes around the front of the bolt that is gonna be our lugs so when you hear somebody talk about the lugs they're talking about these little notches right here around the bolt carrier group now this is the bolt face that is where the back of the cartridge sits right here you're gonna see that on the bolt face there is a little hole that is where you're firing pin will come through and make contact with the primer allowing the round to go off now located on the bolt itself you're also going to find the extractor so you'll see that there are notches that go all the way around the bolt face and then there's one spot that looks a little bit different then the then the rest of it okay that's going to be your extractor and then your ejector which is just this little pin so these two kind of work hand-in-hand in getting that spent cartridge out after it's actually put into place and holding everything together so as this picks up around it actually gets locked in by this little notch right here has a little tooth on it on the inside and it indexes with the case of the cartridge okay so that holds a cartridge in place and it also helps extract the cartridge once this thing comes back okay so that's the kind of the anatomy of our bolt carrier group now this is our charging handle there are a million different variations of charging handles some are ambidextrous this one's considered ambidextrous which means that I can grab it from either side and independently each one will release this little hook hook right here that holds it into our upper receiver if you have a standard or what they call a milspec it's just gonna be black and very small and it's gonna have that same little hook and you'll have to pull a little lever that is on the side right there and that's basically what comes with a lot of your budget ARS you're just going to find a basic charging handle like this but the way that this charging handle works is it goes into the upper receiver and it actually sits like this in front of your bolt carrier group okay I don't know if you guys can see that really well I apologize but it sits in front of your bolt carrier group like this so if you want to charge the rifle as you're pulling on the charging handle you're also pulling on the bolt carrier group like that but when you fire a cartridge what happens is this will actually ride the bolt carrier group will actually ride inside of that charging handle not allowing that charging handle to move so it'll ride freely like this and then come back to rest in the exact same spot okay so let's go and move forward and talk about the barrel the handguard the gas system and then we'll also talk about muzzle devices now as we move forward it's important to note that this is where you're gonna see a lot of differences this is what's called a freefloat handguard that means that at no point does the handguard actually touch the barrel itself this handguard comes back and it touches the barrel nut but it does not touch the barrel that's what free float means there are milspec variations and other variations that use what's called a d-ring so if you're sitting there looking at your rifle and it doesn't have something like this maybe a plastic handguard that is locked between a front sight post that is going to be that triangle that you aim through if you have something that's connected from a front sight post to a ring in the back okay that's gonna be more milspec type that ring on the back that is located near the upper receiver that we just talked about that is a d-ring or a delta ring that ring is intended to simply hold in the handguard it's got a spring that's located inside and that applies pressure against a handguard locking the handguard in so you don't burn yourself on the barrel or the gas tube that's located underneath under the d-ring is where you're going to have your barrel nut the barrel nut is what holds the barrel to the upper receiver there is a notch that goes all the way around the barrel itself and the barrel extension which is a flat part of the barrel that actually goes partially into the upper receiver itself that barrel extension will go all the way to the back and then the barrel nut that's located underneath the d-ring you use a narmer's wrench and they tighten that down and that is everything in a kind of a big that holds the barrel in place with a setup like this we have the same thing when it comes to a barrel nut there is a barrel nut that is tightened down that's what holds our barrel in place to the upper receiver except the barrel nut has some way to attach the handguard so that the handguard is only attached to the barrel nut itself and the rest of the handguard doesn't touch anything else in our system now with this system we have an independent gas block which is usually located in a few different positions you have carbine length which is the one that's going to be the closest so you're talking about the gas block the gas block is going to be the closest to the upper receiver you have mid length which is gonna be a little bit further out from the upper receiver and then you have rifle length which is going to be the furthest out from the upper receiver the benefits that you can get from this are slightly softer shooting rifles depending on how far the gas length is I prefer a mid length because with the GATS gas system that's closer to the upper receiver you do feel a little bit more recoil and the further out you go the less gas pressure you're gonna have as that comes back and so it tends to lead to a little bit less recoil but again we're getting a little bit over the 101 area right there so let's talk about what the gas block is on a free float so the gas block is an independent little piece that actually attaches to the barrel itself the barrel is going to have a hole to allow gases through that hole in the barrel it indexes with the gas the get and the gas block excuse me so it indexes with the gas block that gas block has a gas tube attached to it that has another hole in it so we have a hole in a barrel hole the gas block hole in the gas tube they all allow that gas to flow through travel back here put pressure against the gas key which is on our bolts bulk air group and when that puts pressure against the bulkhead gu4 enough pressure that's what forces it back into our buffer spring in our buffer tube and then obviously you have the buffer which pushes it forward and with each round you fire another set of gasses comes through and that's what allows this thing to be semi-automatic okay so everything is kind of independent located inside if you have something that has that d-ring that we talked about something that's milspec that front sight post that you're looking at is more than likely going to actually be the gas block as well so kind of serves dual purpose it is the gas block it is the gas block and it is the front sight post but it also has a gas tube in that front Sipos you and sometimes you can see it sometimes you can't but a lot of times it's hidden by the handguard but there'll be a tube located inside that front sight post that again we'll come back and we'll do the same thing it will act on your bolt carrier group in order to make it semi-automatic so the difference again between free float and non free float is the fact that there's no contact points on the handguard other than the contact on the barrel nut and if it's non free float it's gonna have contacts somewhere else on the barrel itself now people will say that this way is more accurate and that has to do with barrel harmonics which is a completely different video but barrel harmonics are kind of a big deal that's going to help with long-range accuracy and so forth but still it doesn't mean that your milspec receiver that has the front sight gas block and a d-ring is gonna be any less good than this rifle right here as a matter of fact the d-ring and everything else is a pretty tough way a pretty solid way of running your gas system so that's how the gas system works and that is how it works in conjunction with the barrel now every barrel is gonna be a little bit different this is an alpha shooting sports complete upper receiver so I got this from alpha shooting sports and everything was pre-installed so this was a complete upper receiver if you look on the barrel of whatever you're buying whether it's an independent barrel or you're buying a complete upper receiver you're gonna see that somewhere on the barrel it's going to say the caliber okay so it'll say five five six on it it'll say two to three it'll say 300 blackout there's several different calibers that you could shoot through a standard ar-15 simply by switching out either the bolt and the barrel or just like in the case of 300 blackout all you have to do is switch out the barrel but it will say somewhere on there bylaw it will be marked with the caliber so if you have something you're not sure exactly what caliber is check the barrel look around it this one right here has it located on the very very front it is very hard to see but right underneath the handguard in the front right here it says five five six on it now when it comes to five five six barrels you could shoot both two two three and five five six the reason that this is an issues because there's pressure differences so if you're looking at your barrel and it says five five six you can go ahead and shoot both out of it but if it says two two three the chances it's only been tested up to two to three pressures okay and I know again we're getting a little bit over 101 but still that's a safety issue so I thought I'd mention it if it's chambered for two to three it will probably shoot five five six however there is a risk that you can run a little bit of overpressure in that barrel and in some cases even damage the barrel because of the pressures from the five five six round so keep that in mind now as we move down the upper receiver right here we're gonna go ahead and come upon our muzzle device now a muzzle device is a device that attaches to the end of the barrel with a thread pattern now when it comes to different rifles like the standard ar-15 you're looking usually at a thread pitch of 1/2 by 28 that means 1/2 inch by twenty eight threads kay so on the front here you'll have different muzzle devices you'll find a lot of rifles especially the budget ones still come with what's considered an a2 flash hider or what other people will call a birdcage it's simply a cylindrical muzzle device that comes off the end that has some slots that are cut into the top of it other flash hiders have prongs and you know the usual e the company will specify whether it's flash hider a compensator or something like that but a flash hider typically has some type of prongs they disturb the gasses as they come out of the barrel and if the gases are disturbed they have a less of a chance having flash a compensator is different because a compensator actually takes the gasses and redirects them in a completely different way now this right here is a compensator that is a muzzle device you can have just a standard thread with maybe a cap on it you can have the flash hider or you can have a compensator the compensator will redirect gases to make the rifle easier to shoot for the person behind the rifle and it does it by several different ways so you have muzzle devices that are breaks and essentially what they do is they redirect the gases slightly backwards on both sides but they won't have anything on top it simply breaks those gases and reduces recoil a compensator will usually have some type of slot hole or you know whatever they put on the top here to redirect gases not only to the side but also at the top and that compensates for muzzle rise since the turn comp so it will compensate for muzzle rise and it will help reduce the recoil so there are several different muzzle devices you can get that's another part where there are a million out there but that's what they are and that what they do that's kind of a basic understanding of an AR or what all the different parts are and how all of the different pieces kind of work together now I did kind of go over some of the basics I wouldn't say that they're necessarily basic but still I think they're a good understanding so that you know what you're talking about in the future when somebody brings a point up or maybe you're just trying to clean it take care of it maintain it it's good to know exactly what these things are called what they do and how they work together I'm sure I miss something that's just how videos go I mean you're trying to come up with this stuff I don't use a script and I'm trying to go over everything based just on memory alone so there is probably something I missed the way that I would fix that is just immerse yourself in YouTube you can find a lot of great content here on YouTube there's a lot of great channels out there that have a lot of good information that you guys can use so just to immerse yourself in it watch as many as you can and read the owner's manual the owner's manual will have all the little parts and pieces in it and you'll be able to find where everything goes so if there's ever a time where you put something back and say oh crap where did this little detent go I don't know read your owner's manual it should have a lot of that information in there anyway I want to thank you all very much for watching I really do appreciate it and hopefully this helps some people out you know basic understanding of exactly what you're using so again if you haven't done so already please like subscribe you guys have a good day [Music]

Channel: The Daily Shooter

Views: 846,970

Rating: 4.9396482 out of 5

Keywords: ar, understanding, 101, new, caliber, choice, knowledge, learning, education, educational, cleaning, maintenance, maintain, work, how does, how does it work

Id: SnEbw-oB7gA

Length: 33min 36sec (2016 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 19 2019