Video Transcript
(00:00)
So if you have a Esstac 5.56 placard and you're running your cummerbund on top of the entire pocket itself, you'll probably notice that the retention on the Kydex inserts is pretty tight. Now you may want that, you may want a lot of retention on your magazines. But if it's a little bit too much or you think you can get away with a little bit less and be a little smoother getting the magazine out, re-indexing it a little bit easier, you can modify these. And I want to show you guys how to do that.
(00:28)
So as you can see right here, with a steel magazine the retention on these is not too bad. With a polymer magazine, such as a PMAG, it's pretty tight. I normally like to loosen these a little bit. And so here's how you do it. The easiest way is to pop the insert out of the Esstac itself, out of the entire setup. There's Velcro on one side, as you can see, no Velcro on the other, and that adheres to the inside of the placard or the KYWI magazine pouch itself. This bend in the pouch and the pouch pushing in is what causes the retention on the magazine. So, as you can probably guess, if we alleviate some of this, you know, kind of situation going on here, it'll get looser.
(01:26)
So a hairdryer or heat gun. We've got a heat gun all the way up. And all I'm going to do is heat the middle on both sides. And I like to do both at once so when I insert this back into the carrier both are going to bend. There we go. It's starting to be pliable, at least the front one is… A little more on the back. Should be good. So then we insert back into the pouch while it's still warm. Insert a magazine. I'm going to flare the edge a little bit. And then you got to wait like 30 seconds for it to cool.
(02:55)
Nice. Much nicer. Ah. So you can see Esstacs, they can be pretty tight, but very easy to modify. I still have good retention, but it's just a little smoother. So then all we do is repeat the process.
(04:05)
Ah, no. And there we go. Actually, I should do one at a time. I'm being an idiot. I'm not gonna be able to do both at once.
(05:03)
Yep. I want a little bit of bend, just a little bit. I used to heat these up where I would shoot the heat into the magazine carrier without removing it. But the issue was, I was curling the edges. So pulling it out allows you to just put the heat where you need it. Nice. Might be a little too loose. This is where you just kind of bend them in a little bit. Nice. Yeah. Perfect. Good. That'll cool on its own.
(06:36)
Good. Just going to flare that edge. Let it cool. But as you can see, some of the bend down the inside (you may not be able to see with this lighting) is a lot less steep than it was before. Before it was a really tight pinch in the middle. And we've just kind of relieved that a little bit so the retention can be looser. And since I generally wear these placards with the cummerbund on my plate carrier on top, usually there's a lot more pressure on the two side pouches. So you can even get wild and leave the retention on the middle mag, but loosen the retention on the two sides so you have even retention on all three at all times. You want to get real specific. Yep. That's quite a bit better.
(07:37)
Oh yeah, fun. These SCAR mags have a very pronounced nubbin. Yeah, it's pulling Kydex out. So there you have it, an easy way to modify your Esstac KYWI inserts to have a little less retention, but on different magazines. I'm going to do a little bit to this 7.62 version as well. It could be a little bit looser.