A gaggle of Finns

Irons78

Irons78

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So I scored a crate of greasy Finn capture M91's today from a friend of family who wanted to get rid of "some junk". Opened the box and aside from some M24's, some NEWs and a lone Remington, I found a P-27 with the original 1 piece stock, bolt and receiver are "Finn matched". The receiver has a gouge into the metal, and an unusual X stamp, no idea what this marking means. One old repair around the action. The bore is jammed with grease and pretty dirty, and the rifling is pretty worn. Any history on P27s appreciated.

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Irons: Nice to see a Finn that probably hasn't been through complete post war refurb. What are the rest of the rifles like in terms of condition? Man- every Finn collector dreams of a find like this! Well done.

milsurpo
 
Basically the P series (P-26 and P-27, there are rumors of P-25) were shot-out barrels that were bored out and had new liners inserted to save on purchasing new barrels in the 20s. This is called the Salerno method after where it was invented and can be seen on some Carcanos and the 6.5mm Vetterli conversions. The work was done at the AV-1 arsenal in Helsinki under Colonel Saloranta (who collaborated with Lahti on the LS/26 LMG). This was the cause of quite a lot of controversy in Finland at the time as the barrels were apparently substandard and they stopped making them or fitting them to rifles in 1928, and I believe Colonel Saloranta lost his job. However just prior to WW2 they decided they were fine after all and the bulk of them were fitted to rifles between 1938 and 1940 and definitely saw use in the Winter / Continuation wars. I've shot my P-27 and it's as good as any other M91 I've shot, at least in my hands.

No idea on the X stamp though. Claven might know.
 
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