Finishing up the gas block is a look at the gas ports:
There are two on each side of the rifle and they leave a nice carbon build up on the front of the hand guard! I like that. Through the holes, you can see the stainless steel gas piston and just a little bit of the rear piston ring. Above the gas ports, you can see the earlier mentioned flat area on the barrel that keeps the gas block aligned properly.
Here's a shot showing the solid walnut hand guards in both light and dark finishes:
Laminated hand guards are available too are not recommended as they tend to split with use. Inside of the hand guard is a heat shield to keep it from getting too hot. Eight vent holes, four per side, run along the top to help dissipate heat.
Here's a close-up showing the grip ridges tooled into the wood:
The finish on and detailing of the wood equals the Quality of fine furniture. I've been building furniture for years and couldn't do a better job. Notice the pretty gouges above and below the cocking slot. That's my fault entirely because sometimes I'm pretty stupid. I'll go into greater detail about those gouges when I incorporate the first range trip results into this essay.
Next up is the trigger housing assembly. German housings were made of two stamped halves welded together all the way around. The first rifles built by SMG had milled aluminum housings that had a seam applied to them in an effort to make them look more original. They were then painted black. After somewhere in the area of 15-25 rifles, SMG switched to milling them out of two steel halves and then welding them together as originals were. They are currently available with either black or plum plastic grips riveted on as shown here:
Notice that the upper housing has painted selector marks while the lower one does not. They come unpainted from SMG. I've painted mine and I think the rifle looks more polished with them that way. This rifle has astonishing attention to detail and I don't think that's a detail that should be overlooked (Hint hint).
Before we take a closer look at the whole thing, we have to get it off first. This is accomplished by removing the sprung steel plate located on the right side and running the entire length of the assembly:
There are four pins seen in the above photo, all of which are held in place by the sprung plate. Starting at the front, we have the front retaining pin. The smaller pin right above the trigger is the trigger pin. In the middle we have the end of the selector axle. And all the way at the back we have the rear retaining pin.
To remove the trigger housing, first push up on the front of the plate until it clears the front retaining pin and selector axle:
SMG says in their instructional video (included with each rifle) that this part can be vary hard to remove and must be pushed up with a blunt object and some force but mine pushes up with minimal effort using just my finger. It doesn't move during use though so it must lock on well enough.
Then pull the plate forward and away leaving it looking like this (looks like I went a little crazy with the CLP there...look at all the oil):
Now push the front and rear retaining pins all the way out from right to left and the trigger housing will simply fall away from the receiver.
Here are the retaining pins and locking plate removed from the rifle:
Front is to the right. Both pins are identical and the notches that are engaged by the locking plate are clearly visible. Notice that the front notch of the locking plate has beveled edges. This is done so that it will easily engage with the front pin during reassembly. Original locking plates were removed by rotating them down off the pins. SMG changed the design because they reasoned that the locking plate can't fall off in use if it has to rotate up for removal. I agree 100%.