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Help me Pick Out a Finn M39, Please!

trstone
Oh Knowledgable ones:

I have a Shotgun News in front of me, and I see an ad that has Finnish M39s in it. But being the ignorant slob that I am, I can't figure out what the best deal would be. The problem stems from the fact that there are apparently four flavors of Finn M39 to pick from:
SAKO, VKT (Valmet), SKY, and something called "B". I don't think "B" is a make, but rather a grade of some sort. Can anyone here tell me which is the best MAKE of the choices of SAKO, VKT or SKY, and just what a "B" grade is? The ad doesn't seem to give any explanation.

Help! My brain has fallen and it can't get up!
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Comments

7 comments

Date Votes
  • redcedars
    These stamps reflect the Finnish barrel makers and rebuilders stamps, which may also indicate the branch of service.

    SAKO = SAKO (originally Civil Guard shop)
    VKT = Valtion Kirvaarithedas
    SKY = SAKO made for Civil Guard
    B = Nazi source barrel made on Belgian tooling

    Per Bowser, the serials for the first three are combined, so which is more rare is up for grabs, nearly 120,000 made. But it is estimated that the B barrle M39s totalled less than 13,000. Just guessing, but I would suspect that the SAKO barrels are higher quality than the far less common B barrel guns.

    redcedars
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  • trstone
    So....If I'm going to blow money on this thing, I might as well ignore the "B" barrels, is that it?

    And what of the non-"B" makes? Is SAKO better than SKY and VKT? Or are they so close in quality it's a matter of "eenie-meenie-miney-moe"?

    Thanks for the input about the "B"s, too!
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  • redcedars
    Depends on whether shooting or collecting is your priority for this rifle. I had a Sako M39 and it was an excellent shooter. If you want one more for collecting purposes, rarity is probably more important than accuracy, other things being equal.

    redcedars
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  • trstone
    Redcedars: I want a nice one for shooting, if that helps any. I never buy firearms "just to have"; all my guns are bought with usage in mind!

    Nothing more fun, in my view, than making those water-filled milk-jugs go SPLAT!

    It sounds like a SAKO would be the best way to go, nicht wahr?
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  • trstone
    Okay, how about this for a potential hair-splitter:

    Should I just go for an "excellent" for $170, or cough up the extra $130 for an "Unissued"?
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  • redcedars
    Henry: Got my info on the SK.Y marked M39s fom p.47 of the book Rifles Of The Snow by Doug Bowser and Powers Dunaway. I suppose they could be wrong. I started to collect Finns a few years ago but got interested in other guns and sold my Finns.

    trstone: An "unissued" Finn is still not pretty. But if you pay the premium for an "unissued" Finn, and then shoot it a bunch, the wear and tear will nevertheless degrade its condition, especially any premium value based on its "unissued" condition. If you want to shoot a lot, I wouldn't pay a big premium for an "unissued" rifle that may not look a whole lot better than an issued rifle. If there is a "hand-picked" option on the issue rifles, I would go for it.

    And by the way, Henry got me to looking, and I see I misremembered the facts on the M39 serials.

    SK.Y 500,000-510,588 10,588
    SAKO 200,000-259,278 59,278
    VKT 28,690-67,680 48,990
    "B" 35,814-48703 12,889?

    "B" barrel production numbers are questionable. Per Bowser and Dunaway, only 5-6,000 such barrels were imported; some 3,000 were installed on M39s. But the serial range is included in the VKT range, which is where they were installed on M39s. So it appears unlikely there are more than about 3,000 "B" barrel M39s, although their serials cover a wider range than that.

    redcedars
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  • trstone
    Redcedars: Thanks for the advice! My primary objective is to have a good-shootin' rifle that's in as good a physical shape as I can reasonably get; and I want good wood that I can refurbish so it looks purty. Your words of wisdom (coming as they do from a person who collected Finns) have convinced me to go for an "excellent" as opposed to "unissued" Finn M39, because I can't see spending an extra $130 for a rifle whose bore isn't significantly newer or better than the one I'd probably get with an "excellent" rifle. And I doubt if the rest of the rifle would be significantly better "unissued" as compared to "excellent" to boot!

    Once again: thank you for the input!
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