Folks, I saw the Cold Dead Hands (CDH) ambidextrous charging handle ad on Facebook and figured for $34.94 delivered I might as well give it a try so I ordered it on 6/22/17. The first thing I noticed after I placed my order was that it was shipping from China but was hopeful that wasn’t a bad thing. Well, it arrived today (6/28/17) in a brown cushion mailer and I immediately noticed the bare bones generic packaging it was in and was still hopeful because it looked pretty good.
Here it is next to my favorite model of charging handle, the BCM Gunfighter Mod 3 Large Latch.
It fit just fine in terms of installation and locking in place.
The problem is the unlocking. It is a tad rough from the left side (the non op side looking down from the top where the normal handle release is) but it works.
From the right side (where the ejection port is), if you pull back slow using the right tab the handle’s catch hook pretty much digs in and locks the handle in place. If I yanked hard and fast from the right, it would release. If I went slow, it would not release. This pretty well defeats the ambidextrous function claim.
There’s nothing odd about the upper – just a normal Palmetto State Armory upper. In the next photo, I stopped the handle short on purpose to take the photo of the locking area on the upper.
So, the CDH handle was gritty on the left and unpredictable on the right. Out it went and the BCM Mod 3 went in. By the way, a Mil-Spec charging handle worked just fine as does the BCM. I had a Mil-Spec handle in there before trying the CDH unit.
Bottom line, based on my experience, I would recommend against buying the Cold Dead Hands model. Stick with Mil-Spec or a name brand charging handle.
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