Valmet M78 “DMR”

[u/Bowie37]

Picked up this great example of a Valmet M78 in .308 a couple of weeks ago from GunPost. If you’re familiar with it, you’d know it was developed by Valmet as a possible LMG for the Finnish army. It didn’t get adopted but they still produced it for the commercial market. A semi-auto with a 5 round magazine doesn’t make for a great LMG so I figured I’d see if I could turn it into a DMR without having to make any permanent modifications to the rifle. It performed quite well at the range today with the cheapest ammo I could find locally (4.5” groups at 200 meters). I was just happy that it held a consistent zero! Here’s the build list:

Valmet M78 in .308

-AK Master Mount side rail (AKM Pattern)

-RS Regulate AK-303M lower mount w/ full rail upper

-MDT Premier low scope rings

-Primary Arms SLX 1-6x

-Valman AK2.0 Buffer tube adapter

-Magpul MOE PR Carbine stock (wanted something that was lightweight but still retained the silhouette of the club foot wood stock)

[u/FrankDodger]

Call the Turks. Let them clone this thing and sell them to us for 500 dollars.

[u/Cre_AK47 → u/FrankDodger]

The exemption in regulations only applies to the original manufacturer and Valmet series rifles. Any reproduction, even calming to be a "Valmet" will be prohib. The company also still retains the trademarks for the Valmet, so unlikely they would license their design to any foreign companies, when said foreign companies would rather make their own regular AK47/74 since the original AK were never patented, so they wouldn't have to pay for licensing.

[u/escv_69420 → u/Cre_AK47]

and if Valmet/Sako did start making them again just for us they'd surely be banned.

[u/yummybunnybear → u/FrankDodger]

Sulun VM-308 "M78"

[u/IBoopYourNosr → u/FrankDodger]

The Chinese tried and the RCMP said it was prohib