For generations, the Aland Islands, an autonomous stretch of rocky coves in the middle of the Baltic Sea, were home to hunters and a gun culture rooted in Nordic backcountry traditions. Islanders hunted seals and varmints with bolt-action wooden rifles passed down through families.
YouTube channels and American-dominated internet forums inspired one island resident, a 28-year-old named Elias Andersson, to bring that history into the 21st century. After securing permission from the Finnish government, which controls the islands, he designed and made a 3D-printed rifle called the Printax 001.
He spent years building and perfecting his strange gun, which looks like a cross between an AR-15 and a laser blaster from a science-fiction film. Its name has local roots — .AX is the country-code web domain for the Aland Islands.
The gun’s existence on a remote island chain of about 30,000 people is evidence of the spread of 3D-printed firearms. Once a niche hobby, the guns have been popularized by American enthusiasts as a desirable option, particularly in locations where firearms can be hard to come by. The 3D-printed guns have appeared in the hands of rebels in Myanmar and criminals in Europe and South America.
Mr. Andersson’s decision to design the Printax grew out of the long hours he spent during the Covid pandemic watching American gun-related YouTube videos, which promoted a far more aggressive brand of firearms ownership than he had experienced on the Aland Islands. And when Russia invaded Ukraine, he found a new purpose for the Printax’s earliest iterations: Urged by a friend, Mr. Andersson discussed with contacts in Ukraine providing the Printax to the country’s military. …
Mr. Andersson grew up shooting a .22-caliber rifle with his father, and like thousands of others on the Aland Islands, he hunted overpopulated seals and raccoons. In 2019, he used parts from an old BMW to make the chassis of his own bolt-action rifle and sought mentorship from the islands’ sole gunsmith, Janne Stenroos, who died in 2022.
Mr. Andersson has no formal engineering education and was trained as a seaman, so his journey into gun design might have ended there. But during the pandemic, he spent time on an internet forum dedicated to 3D gun design and mostly used by Americans, fertile ground for his self-education.
“I was drawn to the extremely precise mechanics and physics needed to put a bullet on a target thousands of meters away,” he said. “That kind of knowledge is around here, but not like in the U.S.”
The design is his own, Mr. Andersson said, though he took some measurements from Hoffman Tactical, a U.S.-based 3D gun company.
— Thomas Gibbons-Neff in How U.S. Gun Culture Spread to a Remote Island in the Baltic Sea
putting a bullet on target thousands of meters away has nowt to do with the fgc- 9.
i suppose it illustrates the underlying message that self defense weapons will be available now where none were previous. that’s cool.
still, a printax 001 image would be preferable.
a search for printax 001 rifle returns images of every other rifle produced but that one.
first to post link is my new best friend.
.40?
Link to photo from the NY Times article:
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/06/03/multimedia/03int-finland-3dguns-03-kvjh/03int-finland-3dguns-03-kvjh-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp
That’s because the gun in the pic isn’t actually designated ‘Printax 001’.
The actual designation is FGC-9 MK 1
More correctly its ‘FGC-9 MK 1 Prototype’