The GMW PMAG Wall Mount. Now available now on Amazon.com. BUY NOW
It’s the most wonderful time of the year!…when temperatures start dropping below zero degrees, your bones start aching, and firearms start freezing, and gun owners start refreshing their knowledge on winter gun care and how to keep their guns from freezing.
Winter is the time of the year where most people get warm and cozy in front of their fireplace. However, it’s also a time when many concealed carriers forget about cold weather gun maintenance. Not taking proactive steps to prevent your CCW freeze in the winter? This puts a big dent in your self-defense and defense-of-others capabilities. After all, emergencies don’t stop happening just because it’s not winter – what if a bad guy rears his ugly head, and your gun can’t fire due to a frozen firing pin? For this reason, and especially for this impending winter, you need to learn how to keep your gun from freezing. And if you want to learn how to concealed carry during the winter time, check out our article here. Read on!
Table of Contents
How Does Condensation Affect/Freeze Firearms?
About Lubricants
Foggy Scopes
How to Keep Your Gun from Freezing: Tips On Winter Gun Care
Cleaning Your Gun
Practicing Safe Shooting
Clearing Out Snow, Ice, and Debris
Letting Your Firearms Dry
Lubrication
Keeping Moisture Out
Dressing for the Occasion
How Does Condensation Affect/Freeze Firearms?
When learning how to keep your gun from freezing, you need to be aware of the effect of condensation on your CCW. Once the winter chill starts rolling in, one of the first issues that you begin dealing with is the build up of condensation in your firearms, starting with condensation in the hammer and cylinder of revolvers and pistols.
At low temperatures, air can no longer hold onto water as well and the water forms a thin solid layer against solid surfaces. Anything metal (your gun) attracts condensation when around rapid temperature changes. After water vapor accumulates in your gun/snow melts on the sides of your firearm, moisture seeps in your gun. This moisture then runs the risk of freezing after extended periods of time exposed to cold weather, causing potential firearm malfunction as that moisture freezes in cold weather.. Your firearm most commonly may freeze or lock up due to condensation buildup when one of two things happen:
Bringing your gun from a hot to a cold environment
Bringing your gun from an extremely hot area to an extremely cold environment (outside a heated home into a frigid Midwest day) may cause a layer of frost to develop on exposed surfaces of your gun – which runs the risk of condensation build up and a frozen gun.
This problem may be alleviated if you carry IWB/OWB from inside a warm enclosure to the outside as long as your firearm is kept underneath your jacket or an insulating layer. If you are outside in the cold for an extended period of time, always try to keep your firearm covered up and relatively close to your body to keep it warm. Otherwise, if exposed to elements for a longer period of time, frost will form.
The best cold weather gun maintenance solution is to never leave your gun exposed to the elements. If your CCW is not in your direct possession, keep it insulated as much as possible. And if frost accumulates, wipe it down with a dry cloth.
Bringing your gun from a cold to a hot one environment
Anyone who wears glasses (like I do) will know the feeling of walking into a warm room after being out in the cold. What’s the first thing that happens? Your lenses fog up. The same thing happens with the metal of your gun. When you get back into a warm area after being out during a winter day, moisture begins to form on your CCW like bees to honey.
To tackle this issue, wait until your handgun has warmed up to above freezing temperatures, and wipe away excess moisture. If need be, disassemble and wipe away condensation that accumulated on the internal components of your firearm.
In this situation, the best cold weather gun care to perform is simply minimizing exposure to the open cold. You should use only enough lubricant to clean your firearm, and regularly clean and maintain your firearm to minimize condensation buildup on all surfaces. To learn how to reduce condensation/humidity from building on your firearm, read our in-depth article here.
About Lubricants
The second thing you need to know when learning how to keep your gun from freezing is how to use gun lubricants during cold weather. Although you need lubrication to ensure consistent, friction-free cycling of your firearm, lubricants can lose their viscosity in frigid temperatures. During extremely cold-weather climates, gun lubricants actually stand the risk of freezing. As a result, your firearm could experience slow or inoperable triggers and firing pins.
In the case of handguns, they have recoil springs, recoil rods, and trigger housing that can easily freeze up with frozen lubricant at sub-zero level temperatures. This is because at extremely low temperatures, lubricants may become gum-like and freeze – “gumming” up the insides of your gun.
The good news is that most modern firearms are designed to work perfectly fine (at least in the short term) even without constant lubrication. To avoid frozen lubricant in your firearm, cold weather gun care experts advise that it is best to keep your lubricants at minimal. Although there are lubricants that can work at extremely low temperatures, it is still advised gunking up your gun too much with lubricant during the winter as you’d do in the summer.
However, if you are a constant lubricator, look for one rated for -40°F or colder (no such thing as overkill when trying keep your gun from freezing. Also, use only the right amount of lubricant you need to clean the firearm and wipe off excess lubricant before carrying.
Foggy Scopes
Another problem you might be dealing with during sub-zero weather conditions is a foggy scope. Here are a couple of cold weather gun maintenance tips to help you remedy a freezing scope.
Buy a scope cover
A scope cover can be a huge help for keeping condensation off your scope. You may find scope covers with aluminum covers that are spring loaded and easily pop out. Rubber scope covers can also be excellent choices. When buying scope covers, make sure that they fit snug and can be easily removed.
Clean with alcohol swabs
Alcohol swabs are great for cleaning excess water off your scope. While they may not be the best solution available, you can quickly get rid of moisture on your scope, and the alcohol quickly evaporates afterwards.
How to Keep Your Gun from Freezing: Tips On Winter Gun Care
Guns are subjected to extra moisture and low temperatures during the winter months. Improper gun care during this time of the year can cause your gun to rust and break much quicker. Whether it’s a handgun or rifle, learning how to keep your gun from freezing can help save your life or other shooting activities. Here are some tips to keep your firearms from freezing during the winter.
Cleaning Your Gun
This is an area where many hunters and concealed carriers are sorely lacking. There are some gun owners who have the tendency to clean their guns only when in dire need. In the winter time, this is a big mistake.
During cold weather, the gunk collected from dirt and dust in the atmosphere sticking to your gun’s lubricant within your firearm your gun tend to expand – creating blockages and frozen build up, leading to misfiring and/or malfunction. The cold weather may also cause the lube to gum up and cause the action to stick.
When cleaning your firearm during the winter, disassemble the gun as per manufacturer’s instructions. Put a light coated patch of a reputable gun oil down the barrel and wipe the outside of the gun with a soft cloth of gun oil. Gun wax can help prevent oxidation from sweaty fingers, mud, and snow. Some excellent brands of gun wax worth considering are Clenzoil and Flitz. Afterwards, be sure clean off any excess oil to prevent freezing.
Practicing Safe Shooting
It’s not fun to go shooting when there’s ice in the barrel of your gun. Unless you always carry a field cleaning kits around, your best option is to keep the snow from reaching the barrel of your gun in the first place. When out and about with your CCW, keep your gun out and away from the snow. If it gets in, get it cleaned out and dried as soon as possible.
Clearing Out Snow, Ice, and Debris
Obstructed gun muzzles due to snow or mud can have catastrophic results. The same is true with ice in the muzzle. For cold weather gun maintenance, make sure to always carry a small collapsible cleaning kit for removing these obstructions (especially while hunting!). To keep snow from ever coming into the barrel to begin with, cover the crown with electrical tape. This will not have any effect on the ballistics.
Letting Your Firearms Dry
As explained earlier, cold metal collects moisture when brought inside a warm building. When a firearm is kept inside a gun case or put away too early, rust may develop (see our article on the effects of moisture on your CCW). The right thing to do is to let the gun become fully warmed up to room temperature first and wipe away any water or debris before storing. Otherwise, moisture gets trapped in your gun. In the future, this may result in rusting or frozen internal mechanisms.
Lubrication
As mentioned earlier, too much lubrication is not recommended for your firearm. This will cause the lube to to potentially become gummy from cold weather and jam your gun. Cold weather gun maintenance requires applying only a little lubricant.
Keeping Moisture Out
Guns misfiring during the winter months is more common than you’d think. This is because condensation can form on the metal of the firearm when it is brought back inside from the cold and slides into the action and barrel. When you bring it back outside, the moisture freezes and locks up the action or firing pin.
To keep this from happening, one good cold weather gun care tip is to store your gun muzzle down (so moisture doesn’t drip into the gun) and dry it thoroughly once moisture has stopped collecting on the gun, after getting in from being outside in the cold.
Dressing for the Occasion
During the winter, just being outside can be unbearable due to the cold. And that’s for a living, breathing, heat generating human body – now imagine how cold it is for your firearm. Thus, wear layered clothing from top to bottom. The base layer should wick moisture away from your skin. Wear wool and other varieties of fleece for mid-layers to keep you and your firearm warm. For out layers, wear a thick coat/jacket to protect protect you and your gun from wind, snow, and freezing pain. Also, be aware that in sub-zero weather conditions, proper cold weather gun maintenance also includes keeping the metal of your firearm away from bare skin – frostbite could occur otherwise in a matter of seconds.
The cold weather should not stop you from going out and about with your CCW, or to any gun-related activities like shooting or hunting. Following these tips on how to keep your gun from freezing will ensure a worry-free winter for you and your firearm!
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How to Keep Your Gun from Freezing: Winter Gun Care
The GMW PMAG Wall Mount. Now available now on Amazon.com.
BUY NOW
It’s the most wonderful time of the year!…when temperatures start dropping below zero degrees, your bones start aching, and firearms start freezing, and gun owners start refreshing their knowledge on winter gun care and how to keep their guns from freezing.
Winter is the time of the year where most people get warm and cozy in front of their fireplace. However, it’s also a time when many concealed carriers forget about cold weather gun maintenance. Not taking proactive steps to prevent your CCW freeze in the winter? This puts a big dent in your self-defense and defense-of-others capabilities. After all, emergencies don’t stop happening just because it’s not winter – what if a bad guy rears his ugly head, and your gun can’t fire due to a frozen firing pin? For this reason, and especially for this impending winter, you need to learn how to keep your gun from freezing. And if you want to learn how to concealed carry during the winter time, check out our article here. Read on!
Table of Contents
How Does Condensation Affect/Freeze Firearms?
About Lubricants
Foggy Scopes
How to Keep Your Gun from Freezing: Tips On Winter Gun Care
How Does Condensation Affect/Freeze Firearms?
When learning how to keep your gun from freezing, you need to be aware of the effect of condensation on your CCW. Once the winter chill starts rolling in, one of the first issues that you begin dealing with is the build up of condensation in your firearms, starting with condensation in the hammer and cylinder of revolvers and pistols.
At low temperatures, air can no longer hold onto water as well and the water forms a thin solid layer against solid surfaces. Anything metal (your gun) attracts condensation when around rapid temperature changes. After water vapor accumulates in your gun/snow melts on the sides of your firearm, moisture seeps in your gun. This moisture then runs the risk of freezing after extended periods of time exposed to cold weather, causing potential firearm malfunction as that moisture freezes in cold weather.. Your firearm most commonly may freeze or lock up due to condensation buildup when one of two things happen:
Bringing your gun from a hot to a cold environment
This problem may be alleviated if you carry IWB/OWB from inside a warm enclosure to the outside as long as your firearm is kept underneath your jacket or an insulating layer. If you are outside in the cold for an extended period of time, always try to keep your firearm covered up and relatively close to your body to keep it warm. Otherwise, if exposed to elements for a longer period of time, frost will form.
The best cold weather gun maintenance solution is to never leave your gun exposed to the elements. If your CCW is not in your direct possession, keep it insulated as much as possible. And if frost accumulates, wipe it down with a dry cloth.
Bringing your gun from a cold to a hot one environment
Anyone who wears glasses (like I do) will know the feeling of walking into a warm room after being out in the cold. What’s the first thing that happens? Your lenses fog up. The same thing happens with the metal of your gun. When you get back into a warm area after being out during a winter day, moisture begins to form on your CCW like bees to honey.
To tackle this issue, wait until your handgun has warmed up to above freezing temperatures, and wipe away excess moisture. If need be, disassemble and wipe away condensation that accumulated on the internal components of your firearm.
In this situation, the best cold weather gun care to perform is simply minimizing exposure to the open cold. You should use only enough lubricant to clean your firearm, and regularly clean and maintain your firearm to minimize condensation buildup on all surfaces. To learn how to reduce condensation/humidity from building on your firearm, read our in-depth article here.
About Lubricants
The second thing you need to know when learning how to keep your gun from freezing is how to use gun lubricants during cold weather. Although you need lubrication to ensure consistent, friction-free cycling of your firearm, lubricants can lose their viscosity in frigid temperatures. During extremely cold-weather climates, gun lubricants actually stand the risk of freezing. As a result, your firearm could experience slow or inoperable triggers and firing pins.
In the case of handguns, they have recoil springs, recoil rods, and trigger housing that can easily freeze up with frozen lubricant at sub-zero level temperatures. This is because at extremely low temperatures, lubricants may become gum-like and freeze – “gumming” up the insides of your gun.
The good news is that most modern firearms are designed to work perfectly fine (at least in the short term) even without constant lubrication. To avoid frozen lubricant in your firearm, cold weather gun care experts advise that it is best to keep your lubricants at minimal. Although there are lubricants that can work at extremely low temperatures, it is still advised gunking up your gun too much with lubricant during the winter as you’d do in the summer.
However, if you are a constant lubricator, look for one rated for -40°F or colder (no such thing as overkill when trying keep your gun from freezing. Also, use only the right amount of lubricant you need to clean the firearm and wipe off excess lubricant before carrying.
Foggy Scopes
Another problem you might be dealing with during sub-zero weather conditions is a foggy scope. Here are a couple of cold weather gun maintenance tips to help you remedy a freezing scope.
Buy a scope cover
A scope cover can be a huge help for keeping condensation off your scope. You may find scope covers with aluminum covers that are spring loaded and easily pop out. Rubber scope covers can also be excellent choices. When buying scope covers, make sure that they fit snug and can be easily removed.
Clean with alcohol swabs
Alcohol swabs are great for cleaning excess water off your scope. While they may not be the best solution available, you can quickly get rid of moisture on your scope, and the alcohol quickly evaporates afterwards.
How to Keep Your Gun from Freezing: Tips On Winter Gun Care
Guns are subjected to extra moisture and low temperatures during the winter months. Improper gun care during this time of the year can cause your gun to rust and break much quicker. Whether it’s a handgun or rifle, learning how to keep your gun from freezing can help save your life or other shooting activities. Here are some tips to keep your firearms from freezing during the winter.
Cleaning Your Gun
This is an area where many hunters and concealed carriers are sorely lacking. There are some gun owners who have the tendency to clean their guns only when in dire need. In the winter time, this is a big mistake.
During cold weather, the gunk collected from dirt and dust in the atmosphere sticking to your gun’s lubricant within your firearm your gun tend to expand – creating blockages and frozen build up, leading to misfiring and/or malfunction. The cold weather may also cause the lube to gum up and cause the action to stick.
When cleaning your firearm during the winter, disassemble the gun as per manufacturer’s instructions. Put a light coated patch of a reputable gun oil down the barrel and wipe the outside of the gun with a soft cloth of gun oil. Gun wax can help prevent oxidation from sweaty fingers, mud, and snow. Some excellent brands of gun wax worth considering are Clenzoil and Flitz. Afterwards, be sure clean off any excess oil to prevent freezing.
Practicing Safe Shooting
It’s not fun to go shooting when there’s ice in the barrel of your gun. Unless you always carry a field cleaning kits around, your best option is to keep the snow from reaching the barrel of your gun in the first place. When out and about with your CCW, keep your gun out and away from the snow. If it gets in, get it cleaned out and dried as soon as possible.
Clearing Out Snow, Ice, and Debris
Obstructed gun muzzles due to snow or mud can have catastrophic results. The same is true with ice in the muzzle. For cold weather gun maintenance, make sure to always carry a small collapsible cleaning kit for removing these obstructions (especially while hunting!). To keep snow from ever coming into the barrel to begin with, cover the crown with electrical tape. This will not have any effect on the ballistics.
Letting Your Firearms Dry
As explained earlier, cold metal collects moisture when brought inside a warm building. When a firearm is kept inside a gun case or put away too early, rust may develop (see our article on the effects of moisture on your CCW). The right thing to do is to let the gun become fully warmed up to room temperature first and wipe away any water or debris before storing. Otherwise, moisture gets trapped in your gun. In the future, this may result in rusting or frozen internal mechanisms.
Lubrication
As mentioned earlier, too much lubrication is not recommended for your firearm. This will cause the lube to to potentially become gummy from cold weather and jam your gun. Cold weather gun maintenance requires applying only a little lubricant.
Keeping Moisture Out
Guns misfiring during the winter months is more common than you’d think. This is because condensation can form on the metal of the firearm when it is brought back inside from the cold and slides into the action and barrel. When you bring it back outside, the moisture freezes and locks up the action or firing pin.
To keep this from happening, one good cold weather gun care tip is to store your gun muzzle down (so moisture doesn’t drip into the gun) and dry it thoroughly once moisture has stopped collecting on the gun, after getting in from being outside in the cold.
Dressing for the Occasion
The cold weather should not stop you from going out and about with your CCW, or to any gun-related activities like shooting or hunting. Following these tips on how to keep your gun from freezing will ensure a worry-free winter for you and your firearm!