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A Selection of Evoan Small arms [In pistolbucket scale 1:500]

[Disclaimer: This is not a complete set, more of a dump out of ideas, ive managed to get work. It still misses early rifles, pistols, sub-machineguns and heavy machineguns, as well as post 1990 weapons.]

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The Hiiriö company and its desinger Paavo Hiiriö was able to deliver a succsesfull model to the Army's 1892 competition for a modern repeating and magazine-fed rifle, together with its new smokless-powder, rimless ammunition of 7.92x57mm that finaly gave the Evoan army a matching, or even superceding firearm to its rivals. The Hiiriö company was allready managed some sucsesfull foreing contracts and the Model 1893 featured latest innovations such as staggered column box magazines that couldbe fed with stripper-clips. The Basic model of 1893 or Kivääri 93 (K93) thus became basis of the standard firearm for the Evoan army for almost 70 years. A shorter cavalry carbine Karbiini 95 was produced alongside the long rifle, and after advances in metallurgy and cartridge development, a Model 1907 rifle was introduced just short of the 1st Class War with new splitzer round version of the 7.92mm caliber and new bolt design and sights and recoil bolt. It was followed by an "universal carbine" model of 1913, which featured 600mm barrel and was longer than the older model of cavalry-carbine. During the war, the Model 1913 proved out to be rather popular weapon, and despite intially intended for the engineers and artillery, it eventually found its way to the infantry units as well. After the war and Evoan revolution, the small arm production continued with only the carbine model and it was produced as model 1924 with small differences and improvements untill 1934, when more defined newer model with new sights appeared. The Kar34 became the Evoan main rifle for the 2nd Class war, and despite the development of more modern automatic weapons, it remained in Production untill the end of the war, and it wasent untill the assault-rifle concept became accepted as standard small-arms feature in the turn of 1960s.

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Althought Evoan arms industry had tried to get automatic rifle to work from the turn of the century, its genesis in Evoan Army had been troupled one. The Generals and armament offices disliked gas-system, specially its holes drilled to the bore, so the trouples continued
even if the technology was maturing and other armies were ready to replace bolt-action rifles with automatics as the 2nd Class war loomed by. At the haste of the early war years, Hiiriö's engineers came up with rather clumsy Automatic rifle, K41, with gastrap operation and bolt-carrier that mimiced and actually could be used like a bolt action rifle. The K41 is was clumsy and unreliable, heavy weapon, but out of nothing better options, it remained in small scale production trough the war. As thechnolgical innovations spread around the Evoan producement, creating more workable automatic rifle proved out to be fustrating effort full of stiff bureaucracy, and conflicting and ever changing requirments. Eventually the Valtteri Company was able to get their short-stroke gas piston operated rifle with roller locking bolt copied from the KK42 universal machinegun to work and accepted as K45, but it came too late for the war.
One of the main reasons for the Evoan slow adoption of proper automatic rifle was the concept of Assault rifle Rynnäkkökivääri which development had begun as private ventures by the major arms factories before the war and was hastily pushed foward as mainly as replacement for the submachineguns, which also had trouplesome relationship in Evoan army. The troops liked them, but Generals wanted them to be more, thus an intermediate Cartridge of reduced lenght 7.92mm rifle caliber was chosen as the new automatic infantry weapon that in theory could replace all the guns in the section and make all infantry mens a machinegunners. The RK43 was thus a novel weapon, a long stroke and tiltingbolt operating weaopon, that fired from open bolt and featured foward bipod to support its use as lightmachinegun as well as to be fired handheld as well. Althought its potential, the RK43 more large scale introduction was hampered by the lack of capacities to manufacture its ammunition, which actually was mostly outscored to the lot more capacitious Interkommunaali's arsenals during the wartime.

Ligth Machineguns in Post 1st Class War Evoan army settled in the late 1920s for a rahter orthodox and heavy recoil operated PK27 which was produced in great numbers, but never really replace the old heavy water-cooled MGs in the infantry use, despite the tactical limitations of both heavy guns and magazine fed 1st generation of LMGs. As the war approached, Evoan army sought a weapon able to combine all the functions of the machineguns to create universal MG concept in similar tacticall innovative mindset that resulted the assault-rifle concept. Iso-Jalka Factories presented their recoil operated gun with revolutionary roller-locked bolt and heavy use of metal pressing manufacturing techniques which was eventually adopted in 1942 as KK42 and was to become one of the most popular western machine gun during and after the 2nd Class War. An improved model of KK42-56 with heavier bolt for reduced firerate and updated sights was produced in quantaties after the 1950s.

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During the war, group of Evoan engineers in attempt to improve the RK43 design in analog to the K45 prolonged development had came up an clever delayed blowback operating mechanism utilizising the roller-locked mechanism, where the rolls simply delayed the movment of the bolt. Althought these efforts didnt spring the attention of Evoan Army, the Develpment work was taken over by Interkommunaali who sought their own assaultrifle concept. The weapon was finalised as AME-50 by Uljava's Ase ja Metallitehtaat and was chambered for a new Interkommunaali's 7.62x42mm intermediate round, that was more balanced compromise between range, hitting power and automatic-fire use than the Evoan Short 7.92mm. The weapon soon became standard in the Western Ellardaë and the Interkommunaali pushed the standardisation of their caliber agressively for the whole Alliance. This did not go unnoticed in Evo, where the High Command of the Army setled its conflicting requirments and the fractionalisation to the full-power automatic rifle camp and the assaultrifle supporters by accepting the Alliance's will. The AME-50 was purchased in small numbers for evaluation and the improving the basic concept begun in Evo and by late 1950s a long-stroke gas piston operated variant of the basic design, now featuring fully locked bolt with the roller action was selected as RK-58.
The RK-58 proved out to be reliable and well liked weapon and its massproduction begun in Hiiriö and Reininmetalli factories and featured in several variations. The collapsing stock variant was produced for Airborne troops and mechanised infantry, and due production runs, the furniture was modernised.
In 1964, the Evo also adopted a light-machine gun version, with heavier quick-change barrel and beltfeed. It featured the Original AME-50's feature of firing open bolt on the automatic fire and closed on semi-automatic (the RK58 fired only on closed bolt, part of the improvments of the Evoan engineers)

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After the Interkommunaali had featured new, smaller 5.56mm round, the Evo continued to use the older 7.62mm untill by mid 1980s, in conjuction with caseless-ammunition program, Evoan army finaly adopted a 5.56mm version of their RK-58, to serve as 2nd rate weapon, issued to non-frontline troops and reservists. It was made to accept Interkommunaalis magazines and generally regarded as low-effort back-up concept for the ambitious caseless ammunition program that was to be featured in the 1990s. Wheter it made it there, we dont yet know, as its time draw some ships with sails and brass. But I will return here at somepoint.

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