Finnish Army slings

m/27 and m/91 This sling is brown leather and it has oval buckle. The width is 27 mm and length 120 cm. It is also used with LMGs and Suomi SMG. When used with Suomi SMG, the slings were longer than the originals. This model has no dog collars, because the m/27 and m/91 rifles have wire swivels. There was also made two series of 10 000 canvas slings for m/91 in 1932 and 1934. They were primarily ordered for reserve rifles.

The oval buckle wore out the sling so from the middle of the 1930s they started to make rectangular buckles from steel wire. The color of this sling was originally brown.

From 1936 the color has been green except Friitala and Åströn made some slings from brown leather still in 1941. The longer SMG model is still in use with RK62.

In 1944 they needed more slings but the Army Depot 3 was overworked or it was lack or leather. The order was given to civil company called Kutomo ja Punomo Oy to make 80 000 canvas slings. About 40 000 were still undone when the war ended. Oy Suomen Hihnatehdas made also 15 000 at least two different models of rubbered canvas slings in summer 1941.

During Winter and Continuation Wars Finland captured thousands of these canvas slings from Soviet. These are often with strong SA mark.

Special German style slings were made for cavalry rifles at first from natural brown leather and in new supply from green leather.

Main manufacturers of the metal buttons for slings were army depots and company called T. Tengström.

SKY slings

Civil Guard Organization SKY ordered their own rifle slings from F. Niskalan Nahka-, Remmi- ja Valjastehtaat, Oy Weljekset Åströmin Valjastehtaat and Friitala Nahkatehdas Oy. At the beginning in 1920s they were similar to army slings but they were marked with a year and S.Y stamp (after year 1932 with Sk.Y).

m/30 This sling is designed to give better accuracy in shooting. The sling has two parts and it has oval buckles. You could get a whole new sling or the old sling could be used as a part of this by getting a short extra sling and a binding piece.

This is a sling for m/28-30. It has rectangular buckles for the same reason that army had and the buttons in the loops of the sling were replaced with stitches (not always). The color of these slings is either brown or green. During postwar years Finnish army has often removed the extra part from SKY slings.

As always with SA material there are exceptions. In picture above is older M/30 sling made by using rivets.

These SKY slings had dog collars that were 20 cm long at the most except for the m/28 ski models that could have at most 38.5 cm long dog collar for the extra hole.