A friend in Italy sent me a link to an active auction which was priced over what I cared to pay but we discussed it for a bit. It has cutouts on the handguard. I have always heard - and I have repeated here - those were to promote barrel cooling in the desert.
"Better rethink that, Hogger," sez he. Those are cutouts for the barrel bands of a grenade launcher. Dang! Why didn't I see that before? I have 2 examples and the cutouts are in identical places. Like an armorer used a template. Like soldiers would not have been as precise in the placement.
Just hashed the matter over with mybusa & his examples are also cut out in the very same spots.
No link to the auction but here are pics of the handguard and of the tell-tale cut near the rear sight. These are not uncommon & I don't figure the price is affected much one way or the other.
Not all rifles with the launcher handguard will have the cut on the barrel. At refurb, like parts were simply tossed in a bin and taken out on a what was closest to hand basis. So a launcher handguard was put on a non-launcher rifle and sent back to the front.
The Italians wasted very little.
But I learned something today, and that's always fun!
SW
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File comment: This is the barrel cut that helps hold the launcher to the rifle. Round barrels have the same cut in the same place. zzLauncher3.jpg [ 67.18 KiB | Viewed 2881 times ] |
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File comment: The plugged cut out on the top is the sure sign this was not a cooling arrangement made by troops. zzLauncher2.jpg [ 43.61 KiB | Viewed 2881 times ] |
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File comment: Side cutouts for the launcher. The off side only has one cut. zzLauncher1.jpg [ 42.77 KiB | Viewed 2881 times ] |
