Thread: Sako finbear what's it worth and is it worth salvaging ?

These old rifles were hand made and are genuinely fine rifles. They are always rifles you end up shooting very well with in the field. Lots of rifles shoot great at the range and poorly off a log. Be good as is and each time you do something up it will be better.

A mate has one in near identical external condition. I've shot it and unfortunately, the barrel is stuffed. With a gun of that age and showing signs of significant use, I'd be surprised if the barrel is in great condition. Good luck.

Its an old school rifle, and one of the best. A Bofors barrel, which was a top of the line barrel in the day, chances are the bore is still pretty good. Go shoot it, have some fun, hunt it, and then post the pic's of all the memories. Then maybe tidy it up if you are that way inclined - me, I'd just use it and use it.

I will only be buying it if it shoots reasonably well, don't need a safe queen

Originally Posted by dannyb

don't need a safe queen

Then don't bother salvaging it, as has been said just use it

Won’t find a better action than these (nothing even close for that price) in my humble opinion.


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Originally Posted by 223nut

Then don't bother salvaging it, as has been said just use it

Maybe salvage was the wrong word, rescue from an eternity of sitting in the back of a safe being unused may be better, I don't intend to change the character at all.
Hopefully just hunt with it

They had one length action for .both 270 and .375 H&H cartridges. Can limit scope selections.


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buy it....use it...if it only will so 3" at hundy use it as your bush rifle....give barrel a good clean and shout it a recrown and the worst might just shrink way down. dont really think you could go far wrong with something of this class.
yip a light sand and re-oil fix a decent recoil pad and go forth and enjoy it.

The bore doesnt have to be shiny for it to shoot well, plenty of rifles with dodgy looking bores and the odd pit shoot perfectly well.

Originally Posted by dannyb

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Looks like its made of decent steel!

They were, but they're still not immune to being killed.
Don't let nostagia cause you to bypass a testfire.

Very early production L61R. They first made them in Jan 1962 with serial #1 and finished production in Sept 1973 with serial # 90954, of that model run before they changed the mag catch and trigger guard.

Yea Id spend $750 - $800 on it. Same as I had; bought it new in 1978. Real quality workmanship so really depends what you want to do with it. Do nothing and just use it, or ceracote/re-blue and tidy up the stock and you've got yourself an iconic early rifle..
Maybe check the rifling and the muzzle, muzzle might need a re-crown. From the pic, the bolt looks ok, and the trigger is an easy fix.

Hey Danny, Having completed a restoration a year ago on a Laurona Eibar shotgun that looked terrible externally (water damage to wood knocks and scrapes blue and a bit of pitting on the exterior) but the bores and guts were good and it had always had a good history of pulling off ridiculous long shots at the pond.

What drew me to it was the look, how it pointed, and I'm afraid to say the fact that it was the same age as me...

Thanks to @doubleshot for blasting and ceracoting the barrels to match in to the existing to Midnight Blue ceracote and we retained the Patina on the filigree work, which worked well. I did some polishing and resto work to bring that up to spec. The key I found was finding a good woodworker who's fastidious. Getting the gouges and bumps are easy but if you want a gloss finish it can take a bit more effort.
There's definitely something about being able to breathe back life into items like this and I hope your project goes as well...