Saudi Gold Plated Presentation G3: Gaudy or Elegant?

Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum, and today I'm at the IRCGN, the Central Ballistics Lab of the French Gendarmerie Nationale, taking a look at some of the cool guns in their reference collection like this Saudi Arabian manufactured Presentation G3 rifle, complete with lots of gold-plated parts and embellished carved wood furniture. So this is a rifle that was produced in the Al-Khaj Arsenal in Saudi Arabia. This is a factory complex that has existed since the 1950s, but Saudi Arabia specifically set up licensed production of the G3 in 1972 with a contract with HK. A lot of, like more than a dozen countries, have done this sort of thing, set up their own domestic licensed production of the G3. That was kind of one of the nice points of the G3, is it's a rifle that could be exported for production elsewhere pretty easily. Anyway, the Saudis set this up in 1972. They built a rather large factory to make G3s. Unfortunately, I don't have any good numbers on how many they made, or exactly when, or at what volume. But they did have the production capacity, and they actually added to it. In 1987 they added production of the MP5, and in 2008 they licensed production of the G36 rifle. So the Saudi Arabia doesn't have a lot of domestic industrial production, but it's something that they have definitely wanted to expand. And the Al-Khajj Arsenal is part of that work, to expand domestic arms production. Now this specifically is a presentation gun. These were manufactured both gold-plated like this, and also chrome-plated rifles, to give away as gifts to foreign militaries, to diplomatic personnel, anybody who, you know, they want to give them some nice present. A gold-plated G3 is often what they get. So let's take a closer look, and let me show you specifically what we have here. Receiver markings are a good place to start here. Actually, I suppose trigger group markings. We have the palm tree with the sabres of Saudi Arabia, and the marking Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is duplicated in Arabic. This also says Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And this marking, although not in green, was actually stamped on all of the standard infantry G3s that the Al-Khajj Arsenal produced. Now this does have a German SEF lower, because while the arsenal facility was relatively large, it was dependent on a lot of parts coming in from HK. This wasn't, I don't believe, ever got to the point of fully manufacturing guns. It was assembling and doing final processes on a lot of partially or fully finished parts coming in from Germany. So barrel blanks would come in. Presumably some of these stampings came in already done. They added a marking, but they retained the German selector markings. If we move over to the magazine well, we've got another set of Arabic markings. This says G3, this is the serial number 00237, and this is the manufacturing date of 1409. And if you think that's an awfully early date to be making G3s, well, if we translate that into the Gregorian calendar, that would be 1988. And, kind of cool here, the magazine is also Saudi production. Although again, I don't know if this was actually fully stamped in Saudi Arabia, or if it's a marking that was added to a magazine body that was brought in and just finished at Al-Khajj. But we have the Saudi crest, and then the G3 marking, and then again actually the same production date. So 1409 or 1988. We also have Arabic numbers up here on the rear sight. So that's a 1 for the 100 notch, and then 200, 300, and 400 meters for the various rear aperture sights. The wooden elements of the rifle have all been given a pretty deep engraving. I would call the quality tolerable. This isn't fine European decoration work, but it looks good. It's certainly distinctive. The depth, I think, gives it a lot more impact than it might otherwise have. So we've got that on both sides of the stock, and then we have some embellishment engraving up here on the handguard as well. So basically the same pattern cut on each segment of the handguard, and then a couple additional elements at the front and the back. And then of course we have the gold-plated parts, the muzzle brake, the ferrules on the handguard. So here, the entire bolt carrier, the mag release, the, well, both of the mag releases, the trigger, the safety lever, the grip screw, interestingly, the two takedown pins, safety lever over there, and the sling plate, and of course the charging handle. The bolt itself has not been gold-plated. You've got some important tolerances on there, of course, that you don't want to mess around with. And this indicates that this really is a fully functional rifle. I'm sure it's been fired little or not at all, because gold plating here is going to wear off pretty darn quickly with any sort of wear on the gun. But it could be fired if you wanted to. I know of two other examples of these that were actually given as gifts. One of them, I believe, is on display at the Cody Firearms Museum right now on loan from the Smithsonian Institution. That was a gift from the Saudi military to US General David Jones, who was at the time chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. There's also, I've seen reference to one that was given by the Saudi military to Shah Pahlavi of Iran. That one's perhaps a little ironic considering more recent events. But production of at least the chrome-plated guns was still ongoing as of 15 years ago or so, although I'm told at this point they're being made with the magazines welded in place. So they really are meant to be more wall-hanger sort of decorative trophies than any sort of actual functional firearm. Ones like this are in fact fully functional. So hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. I thought it would be cool to take a look at a fancy spruced up G3, the likes of which you probably won't find much outside of a place like Saudi Arabia. So hopefully you guys enjoyed the video as well. Big thanks to the IRCGN, the French Gendarmerie, for giving me access to this particular piece, which I assume was a gift to a French military officer at one point before it came to reside in the collection here. Thanks for watching.