Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten weapons comm I'm Ian McCollum
And I am here today at the James Julia auction house up in Maine
Where its a cold and windy wintry day
And they figured what better to shoot in the cold and windy winter than a Valmet now
This is kind of the oddball of the Valmet family
This is a Valmet m71 now the military version was the 62 and the more common commercial version is the 76
Uh, If you've seen me shooting a Valmet in competition it's been an M76
and the difference is that the 62 and the 76 both incorporated a number of improvements
mostly the sites. They have sites back here on the receiver cover and on the gas block of the rifle and they're aperture sights and
they're really quite excellent. What Valmet did in 1971 was decide to introduce an 'AK' for commercial sale
And this was in fact the very first commercial, commercially available 'A k' in the western world, so Europe and the United States
and in order to make it more compelling as oh you want to buy an 'AK' you should buy our rifle
what they did is they re-, they moved the sights back to the standard 'AK' style and position now these are still a
Little better than normal 'Ak' sights they're windage adjustable. They have a nice big square post and knotch
uh, but they're in the original positions, and this was deliberately to replicate the look of a typical
uh, Soviet block 'AK' and
In addition they offered them in two calibers you could get them in 7.62x39
or you can get them in .223 Remington or 5.56 NATO and
The rationale for the 5.56 was that at this time
7.62x39 simply wasn't available in the West
there were very few guns around that used it ammo was hard to get it was expensive and
So today when we look at these guns we often think oh, it ought to be in 7.62x39
That's the appropriate correct caliber however the vast majority of these were actually sold in 5.56
Because that was the gun that people could actually, the cartridge people could actually shoot, so this is an M71
in 5.56 these were made from 1971 until
1978 they did also in 78' they introduced an RPK version of this with a longer barrel and a bipod
but still these 'AK' style sights and uh,
Well, I'm rather curious to see how this shoots
In 5.56 so 7.62x39 'AK's while the recoil isn't harsh
You know there's not a lot of power in the cartridge
They're typically fairly over gassed guns
And they bounce around quite a lot the 5.45 cartridge that was adopted later is a much smoother gun in full auto
This is by the way a legit registered full auto Valmet
and so I'm curious to see how the 5.56 compares to 5.45 and 7.62
There we go
Let's find out
That bounces around more than I thought it would, uhm
that that's a
There's some experience to that. It's not, I wouldn't call it soft shooting so much uh let's do a little more
I suspect that like most other 'AK's. This is over-gassed
uh, and putting a lot of recoil back into the shoulder. In fact you can feel it through the stock in your cheek. It's
It's kind of like an 'AK' I guess, Valmet or not. They're all, they all exhibit those, those characteristics.
You know even in semi-auto this recoil is a little harder than I would expect from an 'AR'
In fact it's a little harder than I would expect from an, an
Ak74 in 5.45
But of course we do know that 5.56 is a more powerful cartridge than the Soviet 5.45
Well, if you're interested in adding this particular Valmet to your own collection make sure to check out the link in the description text below
That will take you to the James Julia catalogue page for this guy
Where you can check out its legal status their photos, description, everything else you would need to place a bid and make it your own.
Thanks for watching.