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Choosing a color other than black reduces the firearms lethality and "scariness factor".

Just ask any Liberal anti-gunner ... they'll tell you!

 

AO should dictate the color of your gun foremost.  Or if you are just an enthusiast, just whatever floats your boat.

As I was told many years ago in the Army and it is true-  black is not a naturally occuring color. As a scout/sniper (many years ago) our ghillie suits were made out of OD flight suits with tan & green jute attached. Another tactic is that we were trained to look for black objects and weapon/ vehicle outlines in the field.
Also, part of our  field craft would always be to take a can of tan and green krylon spray paint to black weapons (M24, M16, etc.)

Just as your pic shows, a black weapon sticks out ALOT more than FDE or any other color and will in all environments.

Black is cool too, just depends on you and your application.

Noone try and post a picture of a big ass black grizzly and say black is a natural color.....you know what I mean.

edit- forgot to mention that all my scout/sniper time was in the Kahukus, Makua Valley and East Range, so tan is still good here too.

As mentioned black is a very unnatural color and easy to spot, even in the dark as night or low light is almost never as dark as black.  Trained observers will pick out black in almost any environment very easily, just like hard lines or concentric shapes.  FDE IMO is not the most ideal color anywhere in North America.  Even when training in the Arizona or N. American desert areas, camo with predominant OD coloration fares much better than FDE.  Even when I do camo jobs the base coat is OD with lighter colors overlaid.  There is almost nothing easier to spot than the outline of a black rifle.  The next thing we teach guys to look for black boots, circular shapes and hard outlines like helmets, scopes and muzzles face etc...   

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Surf, do you have any pics of your camo application?

Also, simple Krylon or something else?

 

As you probably know most of my stuff is no longer online.  Let me see what I can dig up.   

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Hmmmmm...

Time to do some Google-fu! 

Here I will save you the trouble.   

I find the Americas and most of the world in general are more suited to greens.  Also think about looking into a hole in the brush.  Generally it is dark with splashes of light colors visible as light seeps in.  So a darker or OD type base color with overlaid lighter colors.  In reality the old school tiger camo does extremely well here in Hawaii especially if the color or camo is very "worn in" so to speak.  Actually most camo gets better as it gets "broken in" as opposed to factory fresh. 

I do like rattle can camo jobs, as they do "wear in" well and are easy to apply and simple to touch up as needed.  Also very cost effective.  Without a doubt my favorite way to apply a camo finish.  Here is a quick example of a tiger camo job I did on an 870 resto project. 

This Wingmaster had gotten damp from a leak where it was stored and the owner didn't know until it got to this point.


After I did the metal work, I laid down the base colors with OD


Next I lay down some black


Then overlay colors in an attempt to create a "shadow" type of effect.  This would still be on the darker side as in a lush jungle environment, however it can be lightened up that blends well in deserts like Arizona where there still is a lot of greenery.


Up close shows how I hit this with a matte finish coat that deepens the colors.  This is more showy and I wouldn't do this on a pure "field" rifle.


Same concept with this Remington, however the pattern was lightened up and not hit with a matte finish coat.  It spent some time in AZ an NM and blended much better than an FDE based camo job. 

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Not only AO, but also light factors.

For night settings, dark browns or greys.

For forest, whatever floats your boat.

Black silhouettes in most environments, so if you are trying to be as 'adaptive' as possible, avoid black.

All my ARs are black!  Anything that pisses off or scares a liberal, I'm getting THAT!!   

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Benefits of FDE over Black for rifles?

FDE looked really awesome in Lone Survivor

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Do what you want. It's your gun.

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Good point.

sweet rifle
you bringing it saturday?