gun show - Finland
 

One of the main gun show events is almost at an end as I type this. My gun club participated in carrying out certain assignments during this show, I volunteered to carry my share. This enabled me to take shots of exhibits after show was closed from public. That was really handy since photography is difficult in dense crowd. On some shots I was able to really take my time with them. (Yet again - please don't hold your breath - photos are not really that good).

I'm not a writer, but I shall try to put up a short commentary on what was on offer for the public.
Pictures work well for me, they'll nicely fill in the voids which I'm unable to transmit accross in words. Since no commentary is ready, I'll give you four pictures to look at which I took at that show. Bottom three pics are no news to you guys but I'll say on the first one that "yes, silencers are legal over here - really fun to fire away with a silenced .22lr Ruger with a red dot sight on it".
Let's see if rest of the pics generate any commentary from you folks.

http://personal.inet.fi/viihde/rwd_s...ow/gunshow.htm

After that treatment you may pass the time with pretty surprising homepage which I got introduced to at the gun show.
http://www.retrotroops.com/
To get to forum of this site, follow path of clicking at: info - next - main.

Happy surfing to ya'll.

-Artsi

Artsi,

What can you tell us about the Luger conversion unit in your photos. It looks like a cross between a Lahti and a Luger!

I have never seen anything like that before.

John, Perhaps this was the Salobellum conversion shown on page 608 of Ezell's "Handguns of the World". Tom H.

I don't own the book Tom... What caliber is this conversion?

Mr Sabato, I was told it's a .22 caliber conversion designed by Mr Aimo Lahti himself.

The other barrel that is lying there is a more familiar looking .22 conversion.

Artsi,

Are these conversions common in Finland? As I said, I have never seen one in the U.S.

Was the one in the photo for sale at the gun show or just for display? What is their value on the open market?

(and Arto, my first name is John, Mr. Sabato is my father [img]biggrin.gif[/img] )

John, I'm not a die-hard P08 enthusiast. I got to know about this particular .22cal conversion very first time at that gun show. Therefore I have no idea just how rare they are and how much they go for. I shall come back to this issue when I have scrounged more info on this topic.

Only very few guns were there for display only.

Borchardt in one pic went for 3700â?¬. (Euro and $ U.S. are very close to currency ratio of 1 to 1)

-Artsi

that would be a very good price on the Borchardt... they go for many more thousands of dollars here in the U.S.

I will look forward to any information you might find out about those conversions in the future.

Thanks,

John,
I made couple phonecalls over this .22 conversion. Initially I was told it to be Aimo Lahti being the designer, but newest info indicates it to be Mr. Saloranta. The creation goes under a nickname of 'Salobellum'.
Apparently not that many conversions were made, hence they are rare and pricey. (I was in too much of awe at the time I took the photo, so I didn't realise to ask history of that conversion

I don't have any history books on P08 - I just concentrate on shooting it [img]smile.gif[/img] (So I have no reference material where to look up stuff).
I tried various word combos on this .22 conversion as scrounging info in the internet. Only 'salobellum' gave appropriate results. Here is a copied cut-away from a Russian gun page, translated into English by allmighty AltaVista powered automatic translator.

---
"...Later it created the combat pistol, which, however, was rejected in favor of the pistol of the same Lahti "L -35".Saloranta is the developer of the complete set Of "salobellum" for the repartition/conversion of the pistol of caliber 22 OF LR into the pistol Lueger pistol. "
---

Original Russian text located at:
http://club.guns.ru/lahti.html


I'll tuck this behind my ear and I'll come back to this sometime later when I get more info.

-Artsi