Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are taking a look
at a very cool Finnish competition and sniper's rifle.
This is an m/28-76,
and it is not quite the final culmination
of a program of developing the Mosin-Nagant platform
into a precision sniper's rifle in Finland.
So if we go back to ... the inter-war years before World War Two,
the Finns developed a number of different scoped versions of the Mosin.
The Army and the Civil Guard both have their own development programs.
Ultimately the Army comes up with the m/39 PH,
with a ... small ... but heavy, blocky, terrible scope, the Physica, on the m/39 PH.
As well as some versions with Soviet scopes, and German scopes, and Finnish copies of German scopes.
It's a clunky, messy program and they don't really make that much use of it.
I do have a video on the m/39 PH, I'll link to ... that at the end of this in case you're interested in it.
But they don't really use scoped rifles that much anyway during the war.
Now fast forward to 1954 and the Army starts to think about, "Maybe we should give this another try."
And they do some experiments with precision rifles and don't end up adopting anything.
But it does give them the idea that perhaps they should put together a
better version of the standard issue Mosin for competition.
And that will become the m/28-57.
Essentially what they do is they take an m/28 rifle and put really good diopter sights on it,
and they use it for international military competitions.
... Diopter sights are going to be a lot more accurate and a lot more effective
than the standard open notch sights on a Mosin.
And that works fine, in fact as they continue using them they realise that,
"You know what? We're not putting bayonets on the ends of these things anymore."
The stocks do occasionally have some issues with warping
during humidity and temperature changes and put pressure on the barrel and hurt the accuracy a bit.
So they lop off the end of the stock, kind of like this, they give it a little bit more of a pistol grip.
And that becomes the m/28-57 H, particularly used for biathlon shooting.
Keep that in mind, fast forward another ... eight years,
and development of the new RK 62, essentially the Finnish AK, is pretty well finished.
The gun is in production, things are going well,
and the Finns start looking at once again a sniper's rifle.
And Valmet figures that they'll make an AK-based sniper rifle in 7.62x54 rimmed,
and that'll be exactly what the Finnish Army needs.
And they go through development of this, they build the first couple of them,
everyone's excited about it, it's looking good.
And they get these rifles out to test and everything goes terribly wrong.
Turns out the new rifle, the TAK, it performs terribly.
The accuracy is just way below what the Finnish Army needs.
And so there's a little bit of a scramble of, "You know, we were planning on having this semi-auto sniper
and now we can't, but we do kind of want sniper rifles. So ... what do we do in the meantime?"
And what they do essentially is they look to that m/28-57 competition rifle
and basically reproduce it for the military.
And this will be known as the m/27-66.
27 because ... the bolts and the trigger mechanisms,
and probably the receivers too, come from Finnish Army m/27 rifles.
But they essentially give them a 28-30 barrel, it's a heavier profile barrel than the m/39s or the m/27s.
And they give them a stock again that's starting to look even closer to this.
It doesn't quite have this squared off distinctive pistol grip.
The shape of the stock is a little bit different,
but it's cut off in the front here like a sporting rifle.
It's got diopter sights on it, and some of them have scopes on them for military sniper use.
And that is what's put into service to some extent.
I say "put into service", the Finns didn't actually go to war with these things.
So they served primarily as competition rifles, but they were also available as military sniper rifles.
Had they been needed, that would have been the standard sniper.
Now fast forward another couple of years and the Finns have all of those
m/28-57 competition rifles still around that were sort of being built up as biathlon rifles.
But by this point international biathlon no longer uses
full-power rifle cartridges, it's now using .22 rimfire.
And so these 28-57s aren't really good for much of anything.
And so the Army rounds them up
and decides to rebuild them in a new pattern, the 28-76, and that is what we have here.
They go ahead and put the final version of this stock on them.
So it's a short stock so there's nothing out here to interfere with the barrel,
it's bedded underneath here, you've got a really good heavy pistol grip,
adjustable spacer length, it's a really nice competition stock.
And these are put together by the Finnish First Weapons Depot, Asevarikko 1, in Kuopio.
Where they convert somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 of the m/28-57s to m/28-76 pattern.
So let's take a closer look at it.
I'm going to start with the scope off here
so we can take a look at some of the details here a little more closely.
First off, the barrel is marked ASEV 1,
that's Asevarikko 1, that's the weapons depot where these were assembled.
And we have a serial number, which on this one is 10,934.
These started at 10,001 and they went up to somewhere between
1,250 and 1,500, I'm not sure of the exact numbers.
And you'll notice it is marked "28-76" there.
Now this was built on an m/28-30 action, and we can tell that in two ways.
First, it has a rear sight that's only graduated down to 200 metres, which is a m/28-30 rear sight.
And secondly, the front sight is just a bit over 0.25 inch from the end of the muzzle.
On an m/39 action the front sight is set a little bit further back,
and that was done for reasons of the bayonet falling off.
Sort of a long story, check my m/39 video for details on that.
Anyway, they have got rid of the standard front sight post and replaced it with
a competition style full sight hood with a little competition [front] aperture in there. ...
And that is designed to go along with a rear diopter sight, which I have right here.
So they have actually milled out a little slot on the side of the action,
and cut out a matching slot on the stock.
And this diopter sight is going to slide in right there and screw into place.
By the way, one of the interesting quirks of these rifles is when they came into the US
most of them are actually missing this screw that locks the diopter sight in place.
And this one on mine has a screw, but it's a screw that doesn't fit
because it's actually smaller than the threaded hole, so it sits there but it just falls out.
Anyway, this diopter sight is used for competition shooting,
it's precisely adjustable, windage and elevation.
It's a great piece of competition hardware.
However, some of these, not all of them but some of them,
were also manufactured with a scope mounting base, and that is right here.
So it's mounted right on top of the receiver and it's a tapered dovetail.
And it is used in conjunction with usually a 4x power telescopic sight.
So this is the most common of the Finnish-used scopes.
It is marked MSW Wetzlar, it's a German-made scope, 4x36 power.
That castle is the Finnish military property mark, and it's also serialised.
The base is also military marked and marked AV 1, same as the rifle.
That's Military Depot Number 1.
And then it has a bullet drop compensator out to 800 metres,
as well as of course windage adjustment on the other side.
The reticle, as you can see right there, is just a very simple German post.
And it's held in place with a tapered dovetail, this lever,
(there we go) and this locking thumb screw.
You can see a little ... oval recess cut in the scope base there, that's for that lock screw.
And then we have a pin right here on the side of the scope base.
So the way this works is we're going to slide it into the dovetail base.
And I need to pull the lever all the way back.
When the scope is all the way inserted ...
you can see that this lever is going to start to hook onto that pin.
And when I pull the lever forward it's going to give me leverage
to tighten that base down onto the mounting block.
This pin here is just an over-travel stop if you need it.
But once you have this hand tightened in,
you then just screw down that locking pin and the scope is in place, and quick detachable as well.
The bolt handle has been substantially modified.
If you look up close, you can see they actually cut off the original and then notched in a new bolt handle.
And that of course is there so that it clears the scope.
Although it actually was originally developed to clear the diopter iron sights.
Because this modification was done all the way back on the 28-57 pattern
and just maintained through for the scoped rifles that would come later.
The stock here is very much a heavy competition stock.
It is not the least bit ambidextrous, but this particular one is actually left-handed.
So they made ... allegedly about 10% of these with left-handed stocks.
The action is still normal typical right-handed,
but the Finns recognised that their left-handed precision shooters
or left-handed competition shooters would need a left-handed stock.
So on a side note, I am very lucky to have found this particular one
available on the second-hand market.
Because it's really cool that I have a left-handed version that I can actually try to shoot well.
Anyway, the rest of the rifle is pretty standard.
The original magazine is the same, the triggers have been overhauled
to be very light, crisp, two-stage triggers, they are fantastic.
There is a rail in the bottom of the stock for a standard competition-style handguard, or a bipod.
And there's another rail on the left side, that would be for a competition sling.
And by the way, you saw this sitting on a bipod at the beginning of the video,
this is a commercial competition hand stop and bipod.
So this isn't military issue, but this is along the lines of what would have been used
with the 28-76 in competition.
Now, most of these were actually just made with the diopter iron sights,
only a smaller number of them were outfitted with the scope mounts.
And those were done so that they could serve as military sniper rifles should the need arise.
But the scopes weren't legal in international competition at the time.
So all the rifles had diopters, they could be used for competition,
and then some of them were also available for military service, like this one.
Now let's go ahead and take this out to the range and see how she shoots.
... I've got a mini-Mozambique target out there at about 125 yards, let's see if I can hit it.
And that, I yanked the trigger because, holy cow,
I always have to remind myself how short and crisp the trigger on these is.
This has a two-stage trigger, but once you hit that wall ...
like you go into it thinking "Mosin-Nagant" and then it fires.
And you're like, "Oh, oh right. It's a 28-76 trigger."
Let's try that again, so ...
there's the wall.
There we go, that was a nice hit.
It's another hit.
And let's see if I can round it out with a hit on the head part of the target.
Nope, got the target not the head.
So the trigger is amazing.
Well I mean, the trigger is really quite good by military precision rifle standards,
perhaps until you hit like the 1990s or 2000s.
By Mosin-Nagant standards, the trigger is phenomenal.
Let me get some more ammunition.
Alright, so that's what I'm shooting here today.
Decent, not the world's greatest ammo.
These things really shine if you are willing to hand load,
get them exactly the right bullets they like and put the time in for that.
They are competition rifles after all.
I think the barrel is now hotter than any m/28-76 barrel in Finland has ever been recorded as being.
And that's just from sitting out here in the Arizona heat.
So that may impact my ability to make some hits, but look, there's some more shooting here.
Whoo, and I didn't tighten that bipod down enough, slide him back in there.
There we go. Alright.
I'm actually ... able to make pretty good hits on that mini-Mozambique,
hitting the head, hitting the centre to reset the head.
I'll tell you what, I have one more cool target down there and that is a Texas Star.
Once I start knocking plates off of it, assuming I'm able to knock plates off of it,
it's going to start spinning and that'll make it more difficult.
Let's see if I can actually do it. This by the way, is another one of those rifles
that you really can't load by stripper clip.
The scope is quick detach, unscrew that, pull the lever back and the scope just slides off.
I'll ... get some footage of that after we get home,
because I don't want to pull it off now and perhaps lose my zero.
Let's see if I can get those Texas Star plates.
It's a good start.
Argh!
Alright, my good start has come to an end apparently.
Four. Five. The action on this is really nice and smooth.
This is not your typical sticky bolt Mosin, this is a finely tuned precision rifle.
And it hits hard enough that with one shot I can knock out the last two plates at the same time.
It's pretty cool. For anyone who's interested in Finnish rifles,
these are a cool example that came into the US in relatively small numbers.
Way hotter out here than anyone in Finnish camo
should ever have to be in if they are not sitting literally in a sauna.
So pesä [?], I will see you guys next time. Thanks for watching.