The Sako L-579 Forester - An Introduction

Founded in 1927 as Suojeluskuntain Ase- ja Konepaja Osakeyhtiö, later abbreviated to Sako, the company has been at the centre of Finnish arms manufacture ever since. .By 1958 advances in precision casting let Eino Mäkinen design the L579 action, with tapered dove tailed bases and a forged one piece bolt.

Opinion is sharply divided between a vocal minority "modern rifles are much better" and team  'made to a standard the bean-counters have all but eradicated'. 

 I first met this rifle about ten years ago, its belonged to two friends of mine.  It accompanied us on our trip to Scotland, returned un-fired, and since then it's sat in the gunroom.  Made in 1974 [probably in April/May when the serial numbers beginning 300 start] it's become mine, and for sentimental reasons I'm going to do a Resto-Mod and take it up on the hill. By Resto-Mod I mean I'm keeping the action. 

The lovely McMillan stock is way too heavy for a stalking rifle, but fortunately worth about half of the price of its replacement. It's going to be carried in the highlands, and if I ever recover from the ignominy of the last outing, on skis too.  My original plan to give it a nice Walnut stock is either going to have to be an example of radical lightening cuts or I need to learn the art a science of the carbon rifle stock. Maybe more Mod than Resto. 

The fluted .308 barrel will have to go too. I'm abandoning .223 and 22-250 as hunting rounds, going one down for Hare .17 Hornet, and one up for Roebucks and Beaver. I want to be somewhere between the Scottish minimum of 80gr and the wind-cheating 115gr specified by Mr Tubb. The 6mm contenders de jour are 6XC and 6mm Creedmoor. With the Creed being a nominal 200fps faster, and the XC having a nominal extra 500 rounds of barrel life. The thing that's tipping the scales in favour of the XC is airlines are becoming more and more sniffy about hand-loads. Fortunately Norma are supporting the cartridge, so its got greater availability of factory ammunition.  It doesn't hurt that I won't have to sacrifice any of my treasured Creedmoor cases. 

More in part 2

your pal

SBW

 

Review: Steve Rinella' s American Buffalo

There is a Venn diagram with Hunting at the centre,  and many overlapping subjects; 

Weapons [not limited to rifles, shotguns, bows, spears, knives, how to make 'em, how to use 'em,]

History [ of animals, hunting, cooking, in prehistory, the last century, and the one before that] 

Biology [of prey, of their prey, of their parasites, and symbiotic fellow travellers ]

And many, many more

You started off wanting to shoot a deer so you could live up to your moral concerns about the industrialised food chain. Before you know it you've got a room full of firearms and camping equipment, there's no room in your kitchen cupboards because you own every means of food preservation 2000 BC to last week.  You're dressed in Tweed, taking the day off to accompany your friend who dresses like a viking blacksmith and only shoots rifles that were made in the century before he was born, to a symposium on restoring Pliocene habitat to Elizabethan mining sites, as chance would have it you're both reading the same book about parasitic infestations in non-native species. All you actually wanted was a venison burger. 

Steve Rinella is one of us.

When the hunting and fishing lifestyle meets the writing and filmmaking lifestyle, it's what Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones described as 'Five years of drumming, twenty five years of hanging about'. Steve Rinella has spent most of his hanging about reading about Buffalo. This is the voracious appetite of the polymath. Find a decayed buffalo skull, take it home with you, contact every expert on your continent to find out more, when you exhausted the first one, fly to another continent, commission DNA testing. read every known account of hunting, processing, and selling every part of the animal by every culture that lived along side them.

Every year he enters a lottery to hunt a truly wild buffalo in Alaska. When his number comes up, he has a lifetime of preparation under his belt, and thousands of hours of reading to set the adventure in contexts; historical, biological and anthropological. He's the ultimate Buffalo buff. 

More soon

Your pal

SBW

Unboxing Review The Shultz & Larsen Victory 7mm08

I've always wanted a Shultz & Larsen but they don't turn up secondhand at the prices I'm prepared to pay that often. The only time I was going to buy a new one the importer didn’t get back to me so I bought the money pit and took a moody Spanish chick on holiday with the change. To be fair there have been opportunities, but I'm an obscurest; I’m not after the comfortable logic of a .308 and I wouldn't be likely to  buy another secondhand .243, so it’s taken a while. The ACL bought a mint 6.5 x 55  at the lesser end of grade two for a considerable saving, I was more convinced than ever there was an S&L shaped hole in my gun cabinet, the itch was upon me.  At the range, one of the wealthier Who?'s from my club rocked up with a 308 in grade three. Southside D took one look at it and opined "that's a bit of you init" the itch got a little worse.  

I tracked down a 7x64 in the highlands, [cracking round], but it had one of the  crazy long barrels they like up there, its septuagenarian owner had used to shoot 'jackass prone' off the bonnet of a Landrover.  

I found  a 7mm08 in Yorkshire which hadn't really floated the boat of the young lad I spoke to over the phone, he was all about a black rifle that was the uk legal version of one he'd used to prop up the military industrial complex in a game he plays online. Ever the optimist I paid a deposit on the 7mm08, sent off my paperwork, and promptly forgot all about it. 

Empire's rose and fell, teenagers became grandparents, glass dripped from its frame, and the bureaucracy coughed up a variation to my licence. 

When I called the gun shop it had been so long the work experience lad I'd first spoken to was about to retire, but made a charming pretence of remembering me. 

He put me in touch with the rifle's owner, who told a much more compelling story of;  

'proper nice bit of timber that', 'wife wants takin' to Spain', 'cops want me to have less stalking rifles, had a pin though my wrist so I'm keeping the light one'.  

He mentioned he'd sent it off for the two-stage trigger upgrade. 

On one of our trips to Scotland I would be passing through Yorkshire so I popped in to take a look and either retrieve my deposit or ....

S&L do a range of mini rifles called Legacy in the 223 and 7.62x39 case families (there's a 6x45 and a Grendel, I know!) a working rifle called the Classic , The Victory - for the stalking gentleman who has to have a job, and the Ambassador for Oligarchs.  All come with really nice features: 

Three lug bolt; I've got a Tikka that'll shoot the lights out of almost anything, its only got two lugs, but if a three lug bolt doesn't stir something in your soul you don't like rifles, and probably haven't  got a soul. 

Takedown; that most beguiling of features, I've got two, never take either of them apart, but it's nice to know I could.  

Cut rifling: Another thing its possible to wax lyrical about, I refer you to my Tikka now wearing a button rifled tube. 

Magazine fed: The dual latches on this thing are really really nice. You don't care? Buy a Tikka and lots of ammo, you'll be happier. You have no soul. 

Sexy timber: Sometimes I just sit and stare at it, within its blotches, and swirls you can see the birth of the universe. I never take it out in the rain, or anywhere likely to be muddy. It makes me feel slightly unworthy. 

Pillars and bedding as standard: there nothing more to spend, just a lovely accurate rifle straight out of the box  

Shultz and Larsen have both long since gone to the happy hunting ground, but their spirit of Danish high end design, woodworking, and engineering live on. The company lacks the marketing punch of their German, Finnish, and Swiss rivals, but by making a really great product at the price of a mass produced rifle. They have a fan base who aren't about to dessert them any time soon. It's a different kind of offering.

These days what's commonly described as a 'custom rifle' is actually a rifle assembled from bought in bits, its pretty amazing that you can, for the same or less, have one from a company where the barrels arrived as bars, and the stocks arrived as planks. A lot like John Rigby Rifle Makers, but with almost ten large knocked off Rigby's price tag.  

More soon

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SBW