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Lukkolaite on inspection

Sako Collectors Club Discussion Forum

FastBK

Member
Hi members. I just receieved my mfg/inspec report from club records on my L579 .244 Rem heavy barrel. It came back "action only" and inspected March 1967. Therefore no shipping or other info on just an action is available. Again this has a Sako stamped .244 barrel, no Borfors Steel stamping and no importer on the bottom of the bbl. Any ideas how this rifle was born? Seems odd for someone to build a custom rifle from all factory parts but who knows. Including pic.
 

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Show us some photos of the barrel markings and the bottom metal. That might help with the mystery.
 
Show us some photos of the barrel markings and the bottom metal. That might help with the mystery.
These are the only markings on the gun. Thank you!
 

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Show us some photos of the barrel markings and the bottom metal. That might help with the mystery.
Hi Stonecreek,
Just curious as to whether the additional pics helped shed any light on why Sako would have "Action Only" records for my rifle. I got a snapshot of my listing in the records and there were quite a few serial number listings stating Lukkolaite. Very curious as to what that indicates. Thanks much for your input.
 
Sako sold a lot of actions to various manufacturers or marketers like H&R, Wards, Sears, Colt, NAA, Dumoulin, Anschutz, and even Beretta before Beretta became Sako's owner. Those proprietary brands would then have their own barrels and stock put on the Sako actions. Sako also sold actions only (as well as barreled actions) through their distributors like Firearms International and Garcia which individuals or gunsmiths would build into custom guns.

In the factory's inspection records a finished rifle is listed with its caliber (or if no caliber is listed it is the default caliber -- in the case of the L57/9's the default caliber is .243; the .308's, .244's, .22-250's are marked as such.) Actions only are marked "lukkolaite" which translates into English as "lock device" (meaning the lock of a gun, which we refer to as the action).

Your rifle's origins are very hard to pin down and I can only speculate. The stock, judging from its configuration, is later than the action. The bottom metal of the action could be as early as 1967, but the round tang and push-button magazine release are usually associated with 1968 and later actions. And while Sako certainly could have produced some .244's as late as 1967, if it was originally a factory .244 then the inspection records would normally show that.

My best guess is that someone put together an all-Sako .244 from parts they married after the action left the factory. Sako used to also sell its barrels. So it is possible that someone obtained a barrel from Sako and mated it with a Sako action and stock which came from some other source. This is only a hypothesis and could be totally off base. Regardless of how your rifle came to be, it is still a very desirable piece.

One more thing you might check on your rifle: If it was originally an action-only and was imported to the U.S. after October of 1968, then the action itself should have an importer's mark. This is usually below the stock line. Should you find somewhere on it "Firearms Intl. Wash. D.C.", then that would be a clear indicator that the action came in unattached to a barrel. However, if it came earlier than Oct of '68, the lack of a stamp means nothing.
 
OOOOOH! I just noticed something in the photos. The barrel has a different inspector's stamp than the action! This is never the case with a completed Sako rifle in that the same inspector always stamps both the barrel and the action. This means that the barrel and the action were not original to one another.
 
OOOOOH! I just noticed something in the photos. The barrel has a different inspector's stamp than the action! This is never the case with a completed Sako rifle in that the same inspector always stamps both the barrel and the action. This means that the barrel and the action were not original to one another.
Thanks a million Stonecreek! I appreciate your exam of all the details. Would you say this disvalues the gun quite a bit? I would suspect so. Thanks again for your expertise.
 
It's hard to say how much it impacts the value. A Sako "collector" presumably wouldn't pay for it what he might for a factory original. But the bulk of the value of a gun like this is in its value as a shooter. I'd say that it is worth at least what a custom Sako with a prestige rebarrel from someone like Lilja or Kreiger might be worth. After all, a Sako-barreled rifle should sell with the best of them. So I'd value it as an excellent custom rifle that looks (and after all, is) 100% factory. Everything on it is Sako.
 
Hey Stonecreek, this dead horse just won't die. I found an old thread on the forum from 2014 when you guys were talking about putting together a reference on inspector's marks and member L-46 posted that it was quite possible to have a a factory assembled rifle with MV on the action and NT on the barrel. That would be consistent with the markings on my .244. Do we have hard evidence that all Lukkolaite serial numbers were shipped as actions only from Sako?
 
Okay, I found the post you're referencing: http://sakocollectors.com/forum/thr...p-to-build-reference-section.9384/#post-67072

If you'll read L-46's comments closely you'll see that the period he's speaking of in which he theorizes that might find different inspectors marks on the barrel and action is during the time when they were changing over from a hand stamp to a rollmark. This would have been in the 1950's. L-46 is also only speculating that it could be possible to have both an old hand stamp on one and a roll mark on the other -- not that he has actually seen a rifle like this. Your rifle's inspector marks appear to both be roll marks.

So far as I'm aware, no one has cited an example of a known factory Sako with different inspectors marks on the barrel and action. But as the saying goes, "Never say 'never' about Sako".

As far as the factory records, well, they were handwritten and entered manually in a ledger. We've found a few apparent errors or omissions, which is not unexpected with handwritten records. However, it is clear that when the notation "lukkolaite" is entered by a serial number that the recorder intended to record it as an action only.
 
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