Steve in Allentown, PA

I have a DSA SA58 with a 21" medium contour barrel. It just came back to me from the factory where the DSA guys installed one of their set trigger modifications. This mod really works and makes the trigger pull nearly equal to my heavily customized Remington 700 6-284 bench rifle.

So I took the FAL to the range yesterday to celebrate the 4th of July. As you might imagine the barrel gets extremely hot after 40 rounds of factory .308. So hot that the handguard is decidedly uncomfortable to hold for off-hand firing. This is not something that happens with my M1A.

I was wondering if anyone has first hand experience with other than standard plastic FAL handguards. I suspect DSA's aluminum free float handguard would reduce or possibly eliminate the problem but I'm hesitant to spend the money.