(00:00) Hi, Caleb with Brownells here, and as you can see in today's video,
I'm wearing my painting shirt, and I'm at the paint booth, so we're going to be talking about
some more how to paint your firearm type stuff. We're not going to be doing any painting in this
video. I'm just going to give you some tips on different stuff with AR receivers and how
to hold them and different things like that because I know we're going to be getting the
questions even though at the time we're filming this, the actual painting videos, only two of
them have launched, but I know these questions are coming, so I'm going to get ahead of them.
(00:29) Alright, so lower receivers, for all intents and purposes, just pretend like this
is a stripped completely stripped lower. This is just one I grabbed off the shelf real quick here,
and if I'm painting an AR lower receiver by itself, what I like to do is I actually like
to hang it, and you don't have to do it this way. This is, I've tried a bunch of different ways,
this is what works best for me, but I'll come through that rear detent hole like so,
and I should have straightened this out a little bit better, but I will come through
all the way until I see the wire on the side right there, and then I'll just use something,
sure I have something here to push that wire in, that's not the best tool. I'll just use
another piece of wire. I'll just push that wire inward. I don't know how well you can see this,
but I'll show you when I'm done here, and just enough, it doesn't have to be crazy because you're
not holding something heavy, but push it in just enough to hold this upper receiver, or excuse me,
to hold this lower receiver. Words are hard today. Alright, but that's what we have right there.
This is how I hold it whenever I'm degreasing, curing, and for the end of the paint process.
(01:57) The reason I say that is because when I'm painting these receivers,
I'll stick four fingers in the lower here, get your minds out the gutter, and hold it like this
the whole time I'm painting. That way, I can manipulate it anywhere I need to go. So I got
a nice and easy way to do this. You're going to get paint on your glove. That's perfectly
fine. That's why we're wearing gloves, right? No big deal. And then at the end, the last thing I
paint will be where my fingers were right there, and that's how I do lower receivers. Super easy,
and where the wire goes, there's no wire blocking any of the spray. So that's the
big plus of putting it right there. That's why I put it right there. And another thing,
when you're painting receivers, especially like this lower receiver here, I get paint on the
inside. I get paint in the pinholes. That's no big deal. Alumahyde goes on super thin,
so it's not an issue. Alright, even on the threads where the receiver extension goes,
no big deal. I get paint in there, and but on the inside, because I didn't blast off all the
anodizing, it doesn't matter if I get complete coverage. I'll just get as much as I can without
getting overspray on the rest of it and call it good. And that's how I do lower receivers.
(03:26) So let's talk about upper receivers. Upper receivers are a little bit different. So
I have this upper receiver here, and two ways I like to hold these, depending on
what upper specifically I'm working on. I can come through this forward assist hole here,
just like so, and then again, same thing, I'll just push the wire so that it's being
retained like so. Alright, that's one way to do it. And then another way to do it is
to go through your gas tube hole. Alright, so you just go through that gas tube hole there,
and I'll do this if my upper receiver I'm working on does not have a forward assist,
which believe it or not, I do own some that do not, and hold it just like that.
(04:29) And then again, same thing, I'll come in with four fingers like so,
and I'll paint the bulk of everything like this, right? I get paint on the inside of the receiver.
I get paint on the threads. I get paint where my forward assist, like just like the lower,
like again, Alumahyde goes on super thin. You don't need to worry about it. No big deal. If
you're running into issues where you have just a lot of paint that's blocking stuff,
then you put way too much paint on. Alright, it goes on way thinner than your traditional
rattle cans. Okay, another thing here, this is where it gets a little different.
Some of your upper receivers are what's called thermofit, right? They have, they're undersized,
so they're made for that barrel to be pressed in there. And for those, I don't put paint on
the inside because that just makes a really, really tight tolerance even tighter. Even
though it goes on thin, it still adds something, right? So I'll just take a piece of tape and put
it along the inside there, and business as usual, paint everything the exact same way.
(05:40) So that is how I paint upper and lower receivers. And again,
I'll get paint on the inside. I won't try to get 100% coverage unless it's in the white,
but I'll leave the anodizing there, and that's all there is to it. It's that easy. So that's
just some tips I wanted to share with upper and lower AR receivers. The same thing applies to your
308 ARs, and by understanding how to do this, you can apply that to pretty much any other gun part,
not just AR-15 parts, but um, and AR-15 parts, you know, your rails and stuff like that,
just use the tips from previously that we used in some areas. Remember where I talked about making
the wide loop? If you didn't see that video, I'll just go ahead and show you real quick. So
if you have to go through an area where you're going to be spraying, right, make a wide loop.
So I'm gonna just string up this really wide loop here and do a wide loop like that, right? Because
if I do a small loop, I'm going to not be able to get the spray the areas where the wire is easily,
but a wide loop like this, I can come in and get that area. That's a benefit of using this black
iron wire rather than something like string, which is, don't use string, um, and I can do
it like that. So that makes things super easy. That's what I mean whenever I say wide loop.
(07:06) Alright, so that's all there is to it. If you have any questions or comments,
just need help on something, feel free to give us a call on the tech line. We'll be happy to
help you out. If you're watching this on YouTube, feel free to leave a comment down below. I know a
lot of you guys out there are super knowledgeable with this stuff, so you know, share the knowledge,
leave a comment, help others out. Alright, thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.