 Hey everybody, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense. And today, we're gonna paint a rifle. So I'll talk about what this rifle is in another video because I think I'm gonna do a review on it at some point here just because it's an assembled deal. But we're just gonna skip all that for now and get to the painting part, right? So here's what I'm gonna do to paint this sucker. I'm gonna close the dust cover. I am going to tape off the serial number just in case I need to ever send this in for anything, although I really doubt. I might not even do that, honestly, now that I think about it. I'll shove the stock in, I'll take the sling off. I'm gonna tape the rear sight. I'm gonna tape the front sight because I'm still gonna need those. I'm gonna tape the lens of the light. Other than that, I'm gonna paint the whole light. It's a stream light. It'll hold up just fine. I've painted them before. Just tape the lens of the light and then I'll tape the muzzle device off around the muzzle device to protect the barrel and the threads on the muzzle device in case I wanna swap that out. Other than that, I think I'm just gonna let it ride. I'm not really gonna worry about it. And we'll see. I got four colors in the garage here so we'll see how I end up painting it. I'm maybe give it a base coat of a green or a tan and just kind of go from there. I'll probably try to add some striping and we'll see how it turns out. So let's go to the garage. Let's paint the sucker. Okay, so I double checked the rifle to make sure that I got everything taped off. I taped off the quick attach points here in the back because I wanted to save those. As you can see right there, taped off the rear sight pretty well. I wanna preserve that. I'm gonna need that. Taped off the light to make sure that we're going to keep and preserve that. Better check that here to make sure that's all good. Taped off the barrel. Obviously gonna need that for obvious reasons. And the front sight. We're gonna need that for obvious reasons. Close the dust cover port. Put a mag in the gun that I've already used for painting previously so that I don't care if that mag gets any more color on it. Everything else I am just gonna roll with. Some people like to tape off the charging handle or stuff tape in there, take the charge handle out together. Some people like to tape off the safety. I'm gonna leave the serial number. I'm just gonna paint right over that. Some people like to tape off the trigger and stuff like that. I'm just gonna roll with it. I'm gonna paint it as is and we will see where this goes. Okay, so I have four colors in my inventory. The first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go with this light green. I'm gonna see where that gets it. Picking this to start first because I have the most of it. That's why it's getting to start first. And I'm just gonna see how that goes. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna do one side at a time, so I'll paint this and then I'll come back in about 20 minutes and give it another go. Here we go. Okay, that's one coat done. Like I said, I'm gonna give it about 20 minutes. Okay, just making sure that the dust cover is closed. That's still closed. Tape still looks good. Well, now we'll come back and we'll try to do some striping and see how that turns out. Okay, so I kind of let my base coat dry. I got kind of a dark brown, a dark green, which I don't know very much left of that. And then I have this tan khaki color here. So I'm gonna try to mix and match these here. Just kind of do a little bit of striping, see how it turns out. I can't find my netting right now to kind of get some spotted effect. So I'm just gonna try some stripes and see how that turns out. So here we go. Okay, so I kind of striped it. I'm not sure how well you can see it from there, but I managed to get both sides of it. So I'm gonna let it dry for a bit and then we will take the tape off and take a look at it and see how it turns out. I'm liking how this is looking so far. Real curious to see when it finally dries. So, here it is. That's how it turned out. The magazine was some magazine that I had used earlier to paint. But honestly, I'm really, really happy with how this turned out. It's gonna cure here over the next 24 hours, but I'm really liking this kind of tiger stripe-ish something pattern. A lot, this one worked out. You know, every time you paint something, it's kind of an experiment. And this is my second, I think it's my second gun that I painted. Probably like fourth or maybe even fifth item that I painted. I painted a backpack, I painted a plate carrier. And I'm starting to kind of get a feel for what I like and how I wanna paint it and what I wanna do and what I'm able to do, what I'm able to accomplish. So yeah, I'm really, really happy with how this one turned out. I'm gonna like it. I think it'll be a real fun gun. Just a reminder, why do we paint guns or gear or anything? It's the same reason that we camouflage anything. Guns, when they're all black, actually stick out. It's a very clear, defined outline, right? Especially if you're in some kind of wooded environment or whatever. It's a lot easier to pick up with a human eye than something like this, right? A camouflage or a paint job on a rifle breaks up the pattern and outline of the gun and therefore camouflages it. That's one of the things a camouflage does, right? Shape, shine, shimmer, size. Can't remember what the other ones are, right? Silhouette, but some of you have no idea what I'm talking about. Don't worry about it. The point is, is that those are things that we need to break up and camouflage and things that camouflage breaks up. So super excited to kind of see how this wears, get a little battle-hardened use on it and see how it looks. But we paint guns, like I said, not primarily because it's cool, although let's be honest, I'm really proud of this, it is cool. But because it breaks up the outline of the gun. So I'm gonna actually run this gun a little bit. I got some ideas for a video on this gun that I wanna do later down the line. But until then, here's a paint job. I hope that this inspires you to go out and paint your rifle because you should paint that sucker. Do brave deeds and endure.