After the Winter War and Continuation War, Finland settled a peace treaty with the Soviet Union, and started looking to modernize its infantry rifles - something semiautomatic was needed to replace the Mosin Nagants it was still using. A variety of rifles were tested, including the AR-10, Sig AM-...

The kp/31 Suomi submachine gun in Finnish service was an outstanding weapon, but it was slow and expensive to manufacture. When Finnish forces began capturing Soviet PPS-42 and PPS-43 submachine guns form the Soviets in the Continuation War, it was very quickly decided that Finland should copy th...

The kp/31, aka M31 "Suomi" submachine gun was adopted by the Finnish Army in 1931. It was produced by the Tikkakoski company (more commonly known today as Tikka), and in addition to Finnish military contracts they were eager for international sales, either commercial or military. To that end, the...

The Lahti L-35 pistol was adopted by the Finnish military with the intention of it replacing the Luger, although production was never great enough to accomplish that goal. Early in its production, a couple of special target models were made for field shooting use, and this is one of them (serial ...

I had a chance to shoot an LS26 once before, but without the benefit of a magazine loading tool – and so I could only get 4 or 5 rounds into the mag. This time, we have a proper loader, and we can give the gun a proper workout. And I’ll also show you how that loading tool works – it’s almost as n...

Finland’s first domestic light machine gun was the LS-26. The prime designer was Aimo Lahti, but because of his relative inexperience and lack of formal credentials, Lieutenant A.E. Saloranta was assigned to assist him. The two did not get along well, and Lahti effectively designed the weapon on ...

Today we are taking a look at an early production M1891 Mosin Nagant rifle. This one has had quite a busy history...it was originally manufactured at the Izhevsk Arsenal in 1894, with several of the features of a very early M91 (like the palm rest on the trigger guard and the sling swivel on the ...

The Valet M82 is a bullpup conversion of the Valmet M76 rifle, originally designed in the hopes of attracting Finnish military interest for paratroopers. These initial military rifles were made with wood stocks and in 7.62x39mm. For a multitude of pretty obvious reasons, this did not work out - b...

Designed by Aimo Lahti, the Suomi m/31 submachine gun is in my opinion one of the standout submachine guns of the World War Two era. Despite its hefty weight (10.4lb / 4.7kg) and lack of a good pistol grip stock, it still manages to be tremendously controllable and accurate, with a very high rate...

Finland adopted the AK in 7.62x39mm after World War Two, and continues to use the AK to this day. The standard pattern RK62 was starting to fall a bit short, and so in the late 1980s a program was begun at Valmet to produce a modernized version for the Finnish Defense Forces. Valmet was acquired ...

Finland adopted the AK in 1962, as the m/62 - a milled receiver pattern. By the late 1960s the Valmet factory was experimenting with stamped receiver design to reduce costs. The first stamped Valmet rifle was the m/71, which used forward-mounted open sights like a regular AK instead of rear-mount...

The Valmet M71 was introduced as a commercial export rifle in 1971, and was the first AK available on the commercial market in the United States and Europe. It was offered in both .223 and 7.62x39mm calibers, because the 7.62x39mm cartridge was rare and expensive at the time outside of Finland an...

When Finland decided to replace the Luger as its service handgun, they turned to Finland's most famous arms designer, Aimo Lahti. After a few iterations, Lahti devised a short recoil semiautomatic pistol with a vertically traveling locking block, not too different from a Bergmann 1910 or Type 94 ...

The Chap takes you through disassembling and reassembling his Finnish Lahti L35, which is mechanically NOT AT ALL A LUGER-DERIVATIVE! Also, he explains how it works.