#Multi-caliber

This is a story about a visit to a new indoor shooting range in Helsinki. The place is called Gunpoint and it’s located just beside Varusteleka, one of Europe’s largest army and surplus stores. If you visit one of these facilities, you have to visit the other, if you catch my drift.

Continuing the coverage of new firearms released at the ARMY 2022 exhibition, today we’ll take a look at the new SV-21 bolt action rifle introduced by the  Kalashnikov Concern. The SV-21 is offered in 7.62x54mmR and .308 Winchester calibers and its main feature is the quick barrel change system.

Kalashnikov Concern first showed the prototype of AKV-521 rifle in November 2020. During the ARMY-2021 exhibition, the company unveiled the final version of this rifle that has passed factory endurance testing and is ready for mass production. The main design difference from AK rifles is that AKV-521 utilizes a two-receiver layout.

Ensio FireArms, a small arms manufacturer from Finland, has released a new rifle called KAR-21. This rifle is designed by a gentleman named Toni Käräjämies and KAR in the model name stands for Käräjämies Automatic Rifle. One of the main features of the rifle is its multi-caliber design that allows changing the caliber from .223 Remington to .308 Winchester by swapping the barrel, bolt and magazine well.

Ukrainian Mayak arms plant has designed an AK variant called KalashNash that has a quick barrel change feature. It is possible to change the caliber of this rifle to any popular intermediate cartridge (5.56×45, 7.62×39,  5.45×39, 6.5 Grendel, etc.) by swapping the populated barrels and using caliber-specific bolts and magazines. Presumably, the two slots cut at the front bottom portion of the chamber area (see the picture below) are where the barrels are retained in the front trunnion.

Among a variety of new parts, accessories and gear recently released by Wilson Combat, there is a new 30-round polymer AR-15 magazine. I assume these magazines are the result of collaboration of Wilson Combat and IMI Defense because they are marked with the Wilson Combat logo but they look pretty much identical to IMI Defense G2 mags.

ODIN Works Enduro suppressor, which was first introduced at SHOT Show 2020, is now available for purchase. This new can has a modular tubeless design allowing to change its overall length by adding or removing baffle sections. It is also a multi-caliber suppressor capable of handling pretty much any cartridge of up to 9mm caliber and .338 Lapua Magnum power.

Turkish gunmaker Hatsan is known for their widely varied line of Escort shotguns. In addition to scatterguns, they also make a series of air rifles – even one that shoots arrows. These airguns can serve as fun plinkers, teaching/training tools, or handle some small game hunting and pest eradication duties. If you’re tired of squirrels getting into your carefully-tended backyard garden, Hatsan may have a gun for you. Now with an August 4th press release, they’ve announced a new multi-caliber air-powered weapon: the aptly-named Hydra.

Multi-caliber user optimized silencer system – that’s how a company called Enfield Rifle Company describes their Novus suppressor which they have introduced recently. What sets this suppressor apart from the competition is that it comes with three sets (.224, .357 and .458 caliber) of six baffles stored inside it that allow configuring this suppressor for optimal performance with a variety of different pistol and rifle calibers up to and including .45 ACP and .458 SOCOM.

Photo Of The Day – As a petrolhead, I was of course instantly attracted by the white Lamborghini Aventador V12. I’ve never really considered a private jet, but I hope I’ll be able to own an Italian V8, V10 or V12 some day. What about the firearm? That turned out to be quite interesting as well. It’s the JJR-HRT from JJ Rock Co. from Phoenix, AZ, with a Trijicon riflescope on top.

FightLite Industries, a division of ARES Defense Systems, Inc., will be releasing a multi-caliber platform called the MXR.

Nielsen Gun Parts is a Danish company specialized in designing and manufacturing suppressors. Among their products, there is a family of multi-caliber hunting rifle suppressors called Sonic GHOST. These silencers utilize quite a simple system that allows to assemble them so that they perfectly fit any particular caliber.

STRIKE s.r.o. is a firearms designing company located in Zlin, Czech Republic. The company has developed a semi-automatic hammer fired pistol which has several interesting design solutions. The pistol is called SR-17.

The Unimag from Ross & Zheng Engineering was created with the intent of having one magazine that was capable of working with the majority of popu lar cartridges that are chambered in an AR15, STANAG magazine configuration (or with similar dimensions). This means that the Unimag is designed and tested with the following cartridges in mind-5.56x45mm, .300BLK, .204 Ruger, 5.45X39mm, 6.8mm SPC, 7.62×39, 6.5mm Grendel, and .458 SOCOM. Too new at this point, but testing will probably be eventually done, but to add to that list is the .224 Valkyrie.

PROOF Research makes a bolt action rifle called Switch which allows to relatively quickly convert it to one of the popular short action calibers by changing the barrel and bolt head.