Geissele Maritime Bolt Catch

[Iraqgunz]

Variety is the spice of life.- Sun Sat Soon, 534 B.C.

Wanted to check out the new Geissele Maritime Bolt Catch and the Memorial Day sale was the opportunity to do so. Installed one on my Colt with Norgon Ambi-magazine release and one on my SIONICS carbine with KAC Ambi-magazine release.

Geissele definitely went a different direction than the ABC/R from Forward Controls Design. I'll be getting some trigger time on it soon and will provide some observations down the road.

[tylerw02]

Looking forward to your review. I considered one myself but picked up an MK14 instead.


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[Eurodriver]

Interested as well.

I have always avoided modifying the bolt catch for fear of causing FTFs (see BAD lever)

[mooseman]

I picked one up and installed it on a Colt as well. I like it! I haven't had it impede the function the rifle in any way so far, about 1000 rounds so far.

I haven't picked up a Forward Control one yet but will be. I've had quite long email conversations with Roger and he (like Bill Geissele) has a philosophy I like. Roger and Bill don't make things just for the sake of it, they design based on function, reliability and actually improving something. In Geissele's case, a lot of the products come from SOCOM saying 'We wish XXX existed' and Bill Geissele saying 'Say no more fam'

[M Sadler]

I picked one up and installed it on a Colt as well. I like it! I haven't had it impede the function the rifle in any way so far, about 1000 rounds so far.

I haven't picked up a Forward Control one yet but will be. I've had quite long email conversations with Roger and he (like Bill Geissele) has a philosophy I like. Roger and Bill don't make things just for the sake of it, they design based on function, reliability and actually improving something. In Geissele's case, a lot of the products come from SOCOM saying 'We wish XXX existed' and Bill Geissele saying 'Say no more fam'

Need proof that content marketing works? Look no further than the Maritime Bolt Catch...

With his reputation for quality, he should stay clear of the naming shenanigans and just sell good parts. You're right, he doesn't make things for the sake of it, he manufactures them to make money. The purported SOCOM connection just helps him make more.

[Duffy]

The Maritime name may indicate the service that requested it, it too differs from Geissele's normal naming convention that starts with Super, and follows the Airborne Charging Handle.

No branch of the service asked us to do anything, but if they did, I'd be tempted to let that be known, and what better way to do that than putting it in the name of the product

For us, it's hard to put "overly-analytic-righty-designed,lefty-friendly" into our naming convention

I'm all for supporting Geissele, we're one of their dealers. They don't put out fashionable trendy nonsense, just well engineered and made stuff that works. The Maritime bolt catch isn't a direct competition for our ABC/R, for they have different roles, it's incompatible with our EMR-A (enhanced magazine release, ambidextrous), EMR-A's paddle's top edge, or the Maritime bolt catch's lower paddle bottom edge would need to be trimmed for these two to work, even then it's not an ideal arrangement due to the close proximity of two control surfaces.

[Iraqgunz]

A point of interest about the Maritime Bolt Catch. You won't be able to use this in conjunction with the Forward Controls Design EMR-A.

[Duffy]

IG, the Maritime bolt catch was first seen in mid April of 2017, by then the EMR-A design was well completed and working, usable EMR-A prototypes were made in Feb of 2017. We thought it might be a compatibility problem between the two, and indeed there is, as disclosed on the EMR-A's product description page on our site, and earlier posts in this thread

To make the MBC and EMR-A work together, material would need to be removed from either the top of the EMA-A paddle, or the bottom of the MBC's lower paddle. Even then this would be far from ideal, the close proximity of these two control surfaces will make both the bolt catch's lower paddle, and the EMR-A's lever difficult to distinguish from one another without a visual.

We took pains to separate the EMR-A's lever from the bolt catch's lower paddle, it's indeed one of the key elements of the design. The area directly below the bolt catch, the EMR-A's lever has the lowest profile and is free of serrations, the design redirects the user's finger to the serrated portion which is as far away from the bolt catch's lower paddle as we can manage, without making the lever too long.



Maritime bolt catch serves a different purpose, which is quite different from our own bolt catch (ABC/R). ABC/R creates a unique control surface that can be easily distinguished from an ambi mag catch's lever, while both its top and lower paddles have a great deal more surface area than a factory bolt catch, they were not designed to have a rearward bias, as left finger accessibility of the paddles (a fine motor function) wasn't a design goal, nor essential for the ABC/R's function, in any case it's not the reason for which the ABC/R was designed.

[EHilderbrand]

I have one on my BCM lower. It's a quality product. Will be using more.

[mooseman]

For the record, I don't run any ambidextrous controls aside from some B.A.D. Selectors and those are honestly for aesthetics on some builds. I have a lot of muscle memory on the standard AR15/M16/M4 controls. Being a right handed shooter helps, even though I myself am ambidextrous i.e. I can write perfectly with both hands, but I shoot rifles better right handed.