How To Winterize your AR15

it's the winter you have an ar what do you need to do this was a viewer request and it was basically like what should i do to prepare my ar for winter or winterization of the ar and i thought it was actually a really good topic and it just so happens i'm in minnesota i have a little bit of expertise and knowledge to speak on this topic and quite frankly anytime you have a minnesotan talking about winter they probably know what they're talking about so that's what we're talking about today my name is dave tim from guns and tactics thank you guys very much for spending a few minutes of your day checking out this video where we're talking about optimizing your ar for cold weather or winter environments now we are outside and as you can see it is winter i do have our first snow of the year and it is yes real snow this is not a fake hollywood effect real snow and this is a reality for me i've been working outside as a law enforcement officer coming on 19 years now and ars firearms outside is a reality for me so we're going to talk about some of the things that we can do to our firearm to make it more optimized for winter use both outside here as well as in the shop and surprisingly there are some things that kind of go a long way not just for winter but also just general manipulation so as you can see i'm wearing a coat wearing my hat wearing gloves and that's where we first started to get into what should i do for my ar and the first thing that i like to set up is to make sure that my ar works well with gloves and not just this kind of tactical style glove that i generally wear almost year-round but also some of the other thicker gloves that i'm going to show you when it's actually really cold now a lot of people will talk about like cold like 20 30 degrees 40 degrees in minnesota we could get negative 10 negative 20. and when you're sitting on a perimeter for more than 10 minutes and it's negative 10 negative 20 these gloves just won't cut it i don't care what anybody says you have to layer up and wear the appropriate clothing and you want to make sure that you can still manipulate your rifle and your controls with those thicker gloves so to begin with i like to first look at a winter trigger guard this kind of seems obvious but obviously i want to be able to manipulate the trigger while i'm wearing gloves and so the material of the glove doesn't get caught underneath the trigger in between the trigger and the trigger guard now one quick insert about trigger guards is there are several different types of trigger guards available obviously the magpul ones are very popular the forward controls one like i have on the rifle and then there's also this older style which was made by defensive edge back in the day and i'm not sure if it is still in production or not i believe they may have sold the design to another company but as you can see again it just offers a larger area for a gloved finger to manipulate the trigger now another thing that i if i don't mention it i know other people would is that if you did still have the mil spec type which i highly recommend just getting rid of the mil spec type this obviously would just go straight across but it does have this spring-loaded pin up in the front you could use a bullet or a pen or a pin punch or something like that to depress this and then the mill spec trigger guard actually folds down now when it is folded down in kind of this position you would then grip it like so and then you could use a larger gloved mitt or a chopper or something like that now the downside with this is that then in essence you don't have a trigger guard because the trigger guard is pivoted right there so obviously if you are going to be using this and you're going to be pivoting the trigger guard down safety manipulation is even more important and i stress safety manipulation all the time you always should be manipulating that safety which is part of the reason why i like the larger ambi safeties as they are easier to manipulate but now if we're going to be running around with a rifle with in essence no trigger guard because the trigger guard is folded down for winter use using and running that safety becomes even more critical so that's just a quick insert point on trigger guards reality is ditch this and get something nicer on now for all the internet range safety officers out there we are using dummy rounds firearm is unloaded we've confirmed that before we started recording so that's what we're going to demo with today but i want to make sure that i can manipulate all of the firearm controls with my gloves so mag release extended or ambi charging handles come in handy with gloves the extended bolt catch bolt release this particular one is a geissele maritime however the radiant one that's coming out looks really sharp as well safeties that i can manipulate all come in very handy so that way when i have to manipulate the gun i can do so with my gloves and that's just some of the basics that works out really really nice i want to make sure i can manipulate my light all the other controls again practice with your gear with your real gloves now a lot of times what i will do is i will keep this hand in a lightweight glove and sometimes then i will put my support hand in a thicker glove especially when it starts to get cold that way i have the dexterity for trigger manipulation however i have extra warmth for this support hand now even with this thicker glove i can manipulate control so right now the bolt is locked back to the rear but if i had to perform a reload i can insert the mag i can hit the bolt release and i can operate the gun i can charge the gun just fine i can do all of that with my more winterized glove now if i needed to i can even grab that heavier duty glove for the primary hand and i can still manipulate the trigger thanks to the winter trigger guard the material is not getting caught underneath there i can manipulate safety if i had to lock the bolt back to the rear i can do that i can still do things with these heavier duty gloves now when it really gets cold i also have a chopper mitt that i will use and a lot of people are going to say well dave that's not tactical i mean this you don't have to blah blah blah blah blah i'm telling you spend more than 10 minutes outside with this negative 10 then come back and talk to me okay this is a reality i can still support the firearm i can manipulate the light you can see that there i can manipulate the bolt catch bolt release i can perform a reload all with this mitt support hand and yet this is staying a lot warmer now i've looked at some of the mitts that have like the three fingers and the trigger finger quite frankly i just haven't found one that works super great for me so it's not a solution yet but it is something that i'm hoping sometimes may be there so i can therefore you know have a little bit more warmth on this hand as well but there have been times when i've been on a perimeter where i've had a lightweight glove underneath a mitt and in the event that it's time to do something i would just quick pull that mitt off and then i would have a lighter weight glove underneath the chopper or the mitt so that's a possibility as well but even with this setup kind of geared for more extreme cold i can do everything that i would need to do safety trigger clear stoppages you know whatever it might be i can still manipulate the gun with this setup and it's important to practice it's important to train taking advantage of your real cold weather gear and manipulating all those controls so that's kind of some of the stuff i do to the outside of the gun as far as extended control safety bolt catch basically filling the light make sure i have that good dexterity to do so again it all comes with practice and training so now let's head inside and i'll show you a little bit about the prep that you do on the inside of your gun mainly what i'm talking about when i'm referring to the inside of the rifle is cleaning and lubrication now i think when winter comes that's a good time for me to take the rifle down and clean it i'm not going to get into cleaning in this video i already have a video on cleaning which you can find up there in the card or you can head on over to the webpage and just type in keyword clean your ar15 or something similar it should pop up i am not into white glove level inspections i just like a functional effective clean that basically gets the rifle clean to maintain that reliability so if you're into like scrubbing every little thing and that's cool you can do your thing man uh i'm not i just want to clean it enough to make sure it's clean functions fine and it runs so generally speaking beginning winter is when i do that now as far as lubrication a lot of people are still stuck in like this i don't know where it came from i think it was like from an arctic military manual of like you have to use graphite and blah blah blah and i'm here to tell you graphite and aluminum generally don't mix now yes the aluminum is protected by anodizing so that should protect it from your graphite lube but the reality is whenever that manual was written i don't even know they probably didn't have the quality lubricants that we have now so speaking of lubricants these are just some of the stuff that i had on hand and generally my go-to lubricants are pretty much either slip 2000 ewl or the geissele go juice and with slip 2000 it's rated for some ridiculous temperature rating and i have not been able to test it to verify down to negative 110 however i have had it outside in negative 20 negative 30 degrees and it does not freeze so this is generally my go-to year-round lubricant the go juice does not freeze as well that's an oil type lubricant if you're looking for more of a dry film or dry lube this ezox is a super thin oil it's almost basically like water when it pours out so it's super thin you wipe it on and then it dries so it doesn't leave anything wet to the touch but it kind of dries as like a dry film i use this a lot of times as like a rust preventative or just to protect it the fact is it's a good oil for that for lubes i generally prefer more of the oil type lube just so i can see it i know that the gun's lubricated things like that but this ezox does work really well it's rated down to like negative 95 so incredibly effective in cold weather as well if you prefer more of that really thin dry film type i would highly recommend that but otherwise lubricate the gun just as you normally would and i generally recommend a lubricated ar is better than a dry ar so we're going to lubricate the bearing surfaces of the bolt carrier we're going to lubricate the rings the cam pin the charging handle and you can lubricate a little bit of the friction and contact points in the fire control group again follow the manufacturer's directions for your particular trigger if you have an aftermarket trigger but don't get into all this like wrapped around the axle of like you got to completely degrease and dry the gun so it has zero lubrication no a lubricated gun with quality lube is very reliable in the winter again speaking from experience and my guns sometimes in a patrol car it will sit overnight negative 20 negative 30 so everything is completely frozen i need it to work and i've tested this gone to the range practiced trained no issues whatsoever now the only other area to talk about then is the optics and as far as uh optics go obviously you want to be careful so you don't scratch the optics but i started using cat crap on my rmrs on my handguns and i'm gonna start using it on some of my optics as well just to prevent fogging and things like that there's going to be times when you go from a cold environment to a warm environment from a warm environment to a cold environment back forth whatever it might be that's just reality and the fact that optics can fog is is a reality now since i started using cat crap on my rmrs i have noticed very little of that in the real world so i am probably gonna start to use that on here again it's just an anti-fogger uh be careful that the lens is not dirty so when you're you know putting this product on that you're not scratching or anything like that use a very soft either a lens cloth a lens uh you know appropriate you know material or a super soft swab and then this cat crap would probably be just fine for you so that is how i winterize my ar again make sure that the controls make sure that the function of the ar is you know basically set up so it is winter apparel friendly get out there and train with your actual gloves again have a variety of gloves think about how long you'll actually be outside how cold it gets in your temperature range what is reality for you like what is realistic for you and then please train with the appropriate gear the appropriate apparel and go out there and see what works and see what doesn't i highly recommend getting out there and practicing that's where you're really going to kind of wring out your gear and see what works and what doesn't again lubricate with a quality winter rated lubricant clean your gun in the beginning winter train on you're going to be just fine if you have any other questions you can go ahead and leave them in the comments section below speaking of questions this episode idea came from our qa series so if you want to see your question get on that qa series or at the end of the month we answer your questions go ahead and send an email to the address shown below that is the qa at gunsantactics.com so if you have questions about this or anything else again a lot of times those questions are such good questions that they spawn into their own videos such as this thank you guys very much for watching and have a great day we work really hard to make content that we hope you as a shooter would enjoy subscribe to our channel check out our featured videos and 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Channel: GUNS & TACTICS

Views: 33,135

Rating: 4.9212718 out of 5

Keywords: ar 15, Winterize your AR-15, Winterize, Briefing Room, How To, ar 15 rifle, Cold Weather

Id: 0bcL5te9pEw

Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 02 2020