Shooter Reviews recently put the new ATACS cammo (Advanced Tactical Concealment System) coating on our Bushmaster ACR and the Vietnam Tiger Stripe cammo on our Desert Tactical Arms SRS. We had these two rifles camouflaged by our friend Mike Cole at Oregon Hydrographics in Springfield, Oregon, and as you can see, he did a fantastic job!  We are especially stoked on the ATACS camouflage.  This stuff is amazing!  See for yourself how well ATACS blends in to the grass and dirt in our gallery below and let us know what you think.

Mike owns and operates Oregon Hydrogrphics. If you own firearms or any cool “man thing” Oregon Hydrographics can make it cooler.  If you don’t know what Hydro-graphics are, Mike explains hydrographics like this, “It’s like a car paint job with 3D graphics between the base coat and the clear coat. It’s a coating, not a sticker or a vinyl.”

“Mike regularly coats 8-10,000 separate pieces each month. You may be wondering: What in God’s green Earth would need that many coatings per month…. but Mike has several contracts with archery companies, he regularly does custom projects for customers, and since he started his own business 3 years ago (Mike has been in the business for 10 years total) he has done hydro-graphics on over 50,ooo different rifles. Needless to say, Mike is in pretty high demand these days. Another question you may have that I originally had for OHG was, how do I know that my weapon is safe with your company? First, Mike has an FFL (that made me feel a lot better, because I know that firearms have to be inventoried every time a dealer receives them), and secondly, he explained how many companies he contracts for. You can go to his website o-hg.net to see quite a variety of different items he has coated.

Lastly, everyone wants to know how durable this Hydro-graphics stuff is. Well I asked Mike purposely to coat my flash suppressor  and my Yankee Hill Phantom suppressor to do a heat and durability test. Below you can see that I used a wire brush and a brass brush, and it would not scratch off. It finally took 100 grit sand paper for me to rip into the coating. I should mention that it also took some soaking in Break Free, which Mike had advised us not to be sloppy with because it does effect the coating (good thing to know for the kind of shooting we do). Also, I checked to see how well it handled heat…. If you have not used a suppressor before, you may not know that they become extremely hot. Normally you wouldn’t coat a suppressor but we wanted to see what would happen so we asked Mike to do it for us anyway. It took nearly 60 rounds before I was able to burn the coating. While the coating on the ACR itself, even in rapid fire, did not show any sign of burning!

If you are a hunter and need a rifle or an ATV coated Mike has 60 different leafy patterns to choose from. If you are in the tactical field or just want to add a cool little something to your pistol or rifle Oregon Hydrographics has some of the latest cammo patterns available : MULTI-CAM, MAR-PAT (green and tan), ARMY BDU, SNOW DIGI, NEW NAVY DIGI, and literally six hundred (yes, 600!) different patterns to choose from. Mikes pricing is extremely fair I may add as well. I have recommended him to some of my friends since I have had my ACR done in ATACS camouflage, and they were very happy with the price he quoted them at.

If you would like to call Oregon Hydrographics their number is 541-746-8660 or visit their site http://o-hg.net/ . On the site you can also get a good idea to see how the coating process is done when you have your weapon coated. They have several videos to give customers an idea of exactly how their product works.

Our Desert Tactical Arms SRS with factory finish

AFTER OREGON HYDROGRAPHICS

We took our Desert Tactical Arms SRS and Bushmaster ACR and let Mike have his way with them. When we got them back they looked very different. Our SRS went from OD Green to Tiger Stripe Green. Also, our ACR had originally been black. Now it has the latest ATACS Cammo. WE WERE IMPRESSED to say the least.

In case you are worried about your firearm going through the ‘hydro’ part of this, as we were at first with about $11,000 worth of firearms going through the process, be assured that Mike knows what he’s doing and he knows firearms!  We checked closely for any signs that our bores had been fowled and we checked the other working parts of our guns to ensure that everything still moved freely and worked properly.  There were no signs of corrosion anywhere and everything has worked as usual since we had the process done.  That’s almost supprising considering how well the guns are coated.  There are not missed spots, no sloppy sections and nothing on either of them to suggest that the finish was anything but factory fresh to begin with.

Bushmaster ACR: before ATACS cammo from Oregon Hydrographics

Bushmaster ACR: after Oregon Hydrographics, with ATACS cammo

Next time you’re in your local sporting goods store, check out the compound bows with those fancy camouflage finishes on them.  Now close your eyes and imagine that finish on one of your firearms (or all of them), then realize that you may just be holding a piece of Mike’s handy work in the moment of your lust.

As for us at Shooter Reviews, it’s been a lot harder to put these guns back in the safe ever since we had them done!

Thanks Mike and thank you Oregon Hydrographics!

For more photos of our DTA SRS and Bushmaster ACR with their new Oregon Hydrographics camouflage finishes, enjoy the gallery at the bottom of this page:

[View with PicLens]

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