“Y” Hand Guards

About 1998 the Knights Armament Rail Interface System (RIS) became type standardized for the Special Operations Command SOPMOD rifle program. Soon after, Atlantic Research Marketing Systems (A.R.M.S.) entered the rail system fray with their series of rifle and carbine length rail systems.

The adoption of the KAC RIS and then the KAC M4 Rail Adapter System and the M5 Rail Adapter System for the U.S. Army’s M4/M16 Modular Weapon System (MWS) program solidified the future of rail systems on modern combat rifles. As a ‘stop-gap’ effort to field a similar capability, Colt developed and marketed the “Y” hand guard design.

The Y-hand guard design was designed by Mr. Vincent Battaglia of Colt. The patent for the design was filed on April 25, 2005. An additional patent application was filed by Colt Defense LLC for the same design on July 16, 2008. The two patents are linked below.

april-2005-y-hand-guard-patentDownload
july-2008-y-hand-guard-patentDownload

The Y-hand guard system was standard 7-hole carbine hand guards with double heat shields. Holes were drilled in the top section for the mounting of rails. Both the top and bottom rail sections screwed into retaining plates that were glued into the hand guards.

This type of hand guard was used by Tunisia and at least one other Middle East customer. The hand guard system was assigned Colt part number 98104 and was mounted on Colt R0977 (14.5″ barrel with safe, semi, auto selector).

I purchased this set from J&T Distributing for $45 about 17 April 2018

Visible here is the front of the hand guard assembly. The rails at 1 o’ clock and 11 o’ clock are the top rail positions with the 6 o’ clock rail being the bottom position.
This is how the hand guard set came from JT Distributing.
Side view of the hand guard and rails. Notice how the top rails are machined to straddle the ridges in the hand guard whereas the bottom rail is flat and mounts to through the ventilation holes.
Looking from the front of the hand guard assembly toward the rear. If you look closely, you can see that the aluminum liners inside the hand guard interlock.
A better view of how the aluminum liners interlock inside the hand guard.
Another side view looking from the rear of the hand guard assembly forward.
Top half of the hand guard is on the left…bottom half of the hand guard is on the right.
Close-up of the top hand guard half. You can see the how the rail section is machined to fit on the hand guard ridges.
Close-up of the bottom hand guard section.
A closer side view of the top hand guard. Machined recesses in the rail sections are readily visible in this image.
In this image, the hand guards are disassembled. Top hand guard and rail sections are on the left. Bottom hand guard and rail section is on the right.
This image layout is the same as above but the components have been flipped over showing their reverse sides.
This close-up image shows the rail screw retaining component that has been glued into the bottom of the hand guard.
This image shows the holes drilled into the top hand guard to mount the rail sections.
Close-up view of the bottom hand guard showing the holes for the rail mounting screws.
Top view of the top hand guard section. Both sets of holes are visible for the top rails.
This close-up image shows the rail screw retaining component that has been glued into the top hand guard section.
Close-up view of the bottom hand guard section with only one heat shield installed.
Close-up view of the bottom hand guard section with both heat shields installed.
Y-hand guards installed on a Colt LE6920.
Top view of installed hand guards with a Surefire weapon light installed on the right rail.
View of the bottom rail with an A.R.M.S. vertical hand grip installed.

The next several images are of the Y-hand guards in use on Tunisian special forces weapons.