Luger

[MikB]

Aside from those with the means and patience to do foreign shooting trips or go through a section 7 FAC application, most of us will never shoot groundbreaking pistols like the Luger again.

Here's a few experiences put together around a DWM 1917 4" trench-Luger I ran for a while in the '80s...

The pistol generally known as the Luger got that name originally in America, from the German American who originally worked up the design. When the Kaiser’s Imperial German army adopted it as their service pistol in 1908, they imaginatively named it “Pistole 08”, or P.08 for short. The main contract for manufacture was with DWM, Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken of Berlin. They used a latin tag attributed to the Roman writer Vegetius of 70BC “Si vis pacem, para bellum” (If you want peace, prepare war) as their motto, and the shortened “parabellum” as their Telegram address. In Germany, the pistol was nearly always known as the “Nul acht” (08) or “Parabellum” until American cultural influence made the Luger name known (though not favoured!) from around the 1960s onward.

It’s an odd pistol in the way it looks and in the way it works, which is unusually complex. It’s a particularly naked and unadorned piece of machinery - the only thing about it that’s cosmetic is the florid style of the ’DWM’ logo engraved on the toggle link. The only screws in the whole assembly are the two that hold the chequered wood grip-scales at the lower end of the butt. It has a stock angle which many writers have described as pointing naturally. Never being in a position where it would’ve been reasonable or safe to shoot it without aiming, I can’t really comment on that, except to say it’s a comfortable pistol to hold in the aim.

Let’s take it through its firing cycle.

When you press the trigger, a parallel slot in a trigger extension forward of the pivot rotates downward. This bears on the spherical-radiused end of a right-angled bellcrank pivoted on a fore-and-aft pin within the squareish side plate above and in front of the trigger, pressing the top end inwards. That in turn bears on the side of a spring-loaded plunger in the forward end of the sear - at this point the plunger is just acting as an extension of the sear lever, and the spring loading takes no part in the process till later. Driving the forward end of the sear inwards withdraws the catch at its rear from a shoulder in the spring-loaded striker, allowing it to fly forward and fire the chambered round.

The primer detonates, the powder burns. The bullet goes off down the barrel (6 grooves, RH, 25 cm. twist) at an acceleration that averages to around 38,000 g. It emerges at 1100-odd fps, and for a 125 grain bullet this gives 336 ft.lb. Penetration in soft pine is over 7”. Because it waits a relatively long time before unlocking, Luger can deliver very consistent velocities.

The breechblock slides on rails between the big rearward-projecting lugs of what’s called the ’bifurcated receiver’, meaning it forks in two. The barrel is screwed into the substantial bridging portion at the front, and the two long lugs themselves slide in rails on the butt group. But right now the block can’t move away from the chamber, because the toggle link joints lie locked in a straight line from the cross pin in the breechblock top, to the pivot inside the middle joint (the one with the knobs on), to the main pin across the two lugs near their ends.

So the whole barrel/b-f receiver/toggle link assembly recoils backwards relative to the butt group, until the knobs on the middle joint ride up the curved cams on the rear extension. That snaps the toggle joint forcefully upward, and the extractor claw held in the cartridge extractor groove by the compression spring at its back end can now pull the case free from the chamber, since the bullet unplugged the muzzle some time ago, and the pressure’s dropping fast back to atmospheric.

The toggle joint continues upward, and the breech block backward. There’s a slot in the breech block with a curved bottom, and as it travels back the extractor, which its really a fancy-shaped leaf spring with a thin trapezoidal flag on the end, pushes out into the breech way to intercept the bottom arc of the case head, pivoting it around the extractor claw tip as a fulcrum and sending it whirring forcefully end-over-end, upward and out of the story.

If we’re going to return the block to battery and reload the chamber, we need a return spring to give us back the energy we used on the exhaust stroke. Slide action autos keep theirs usually underneath, sometimes around, and very occasionally above the barrel, but nearly always parallel to it. Here again Luger is different. The spring’s parallel to the magazine instead, lying behind it in the butt, compressed upward against a fixed stop by a long hook leading from a flange at the base, through the middle of the spring, to the bottom arm of another right-angled bellcrank rotating on a pin across the butt. Pulling on a couple of cutouts in the top arm of the bellcrank is a flat-section drawbar with a ‘T‘-piece at the end, the bar itself cranked in an ’S’ bend to reach the bellcrank without fouling other bits of the mechanism, chiefly the rear toggle link eye. The other end of the drawbar is pivoted in this part of the link just in front of the eye, so both the rearward movement of the bifurcated receiver and the upward movement of the middle toggle joint will pull on it, rotate the bellcrank backward, and compress the return spring.

Once the toggle-joint has opened completely, the rear link is about vertical, a lug on what’s now the bottom of the eye is bearing against the rear extension of the butt group, and a vertical, shallow rectangular slot in the back end of the striker spring retainer (which bayonet-fits into the back end of the breech block) has nested around the flat drawbar, which is itself bearing against what’s now front of the rear toggle link eye. A cam extension on the left hand side of the front toggle link has driven back the striker against its spring by rotating against an angled face inboard of the sear bent, so that the striker itself bears against its retainer. This is the limit of action. Nothing can go any further without something breaking.

Whether aided or not by natural metallic elasticity in the main moving parts (can’t say for certain, but I believe it is), the return spring pulls down on the lower bellcrank arm, pulling the drawbar and toggle joint downward and driving the breech block forwards. The angled slot springs the ejector back out of the breech way. If the magazine’s empty, its platform has overcome the downward bias of another leaf-spring gadget, the hold-open catch, and pushed it up so that the breech block stops here only just after getting started forward again. If you hook your little fingernail inside the left-hand side of the breech way, you can just about set it by hand when there’s no magazine present.

If there are still rounds in the magazine, the next has risen, and an arc at the edge of its case intercepts the lower edge of the breech face. As it moves forward, the case head rises under the extractor claw and lifts the forward end against the force of the compression spring bearing upward against its tail, as it does so exposing the little engraved ‘geladen’ telltale - the raised extractor nose is Luger’s loaded chamber indicator, reliable except in the most bizarre failure conditions.

As the breech block moves the last few millimetres and the toggle link snaps back into line again - the bifurcated receiver has moved forward again so that the knobs miss the cams on the butt group extension - the spring-loaded button on the end of the sear collides with the rear side of the trigger bellcrank, and is pushed into the sear against its spring. This is Luger’s disconnector, and prevents it firing again until you release the trigger, the trigger’s own return spring pushes it forward again, the lower face of the trigger extension’s parallel slot rotates upward, retracting the top arm of the bellcrank outward. It clears the edge of the spring-loaded button, which then pops out, lying along the inner face of the bellcrank top pad, ready for the next press of the trigger.


Well, some of you may already have known how it worked. Those that didn’t, I hope you stayed with that, because Luger is one of the world’s most remarkable mechanisms of any type, with several pieces of lateral thinking going into it, that are either outstanding or bizarre depending on your viewpoint.

So, what’s it like to shoot this piece? The rear sight on a standard 4” trench Luger is a vee on the rear toggle link forging. The foresight is an inverted vee dovetailed in across the muzzle reinforce. I had to file about 20 thou off mine (which was a lightly-pitted 1917 DWM ) to bring it zero at 20 yards, and it was already correct for windage. Accuracy in formal shooting was similar to my CZ75 after that had shot about 7,000 rounds, or the club’s coal-scuttle Browning GP35 - that means we’re talking 2” 5-shot groups at 20 yards, with the occasional 1½” or even 1” to provide excitement.

So the accuracy’s more-or-less ordinary. So is the felt recoil. But, I imagine you saying, what about the famous natural pointing? Why doesn’t the barrel-to-butt angle provide a more straight-back recoil and faster recovery time than slide pistols, as you’d expect?

To be continued...

[MikB]

Continued from previous posting...

Like so many things in life, the advantages and the disadvantages balance to mediocrity. You can only design in an angle like that if you either don’t have a slide at all to bite the shooter’s hand, or can use a very short travel, or can mount it a little higher because the round is light, like a .22 Browning or Hi-Standard for example, which both have rather similar butt angles. Well, Luger doesn’t have a slide, but what it does have is a toggle link flinging a metal joint upward and back at such a radius from the pivot-point of your wrist that its modest mass exerts as much leverage as a heavier slide reciprocating much closer. So the advantage of the grip angle is annihilated, and Luger is really quite an ordinary gun to fire.

At various times during its near-century of history, Luger has had all sorts of reputations - from a fiendishly sophisticated and supremely lethal piece of evil genius to a temperamental, overrated popinjay. Of course, there’s no smoke without fire, as they say, and the truth is that it’s both those things and everything else in between. It’s obvious that techniques have moved on and many, if not most, modern 9mms are better in every way that matters from the purely practical point of view. But it’s still possible to be fascinated by Luger without being blind to its faults.

Common view is that amongst the best are the “Contract 42” Lugers marked ‘byf’.(Mauser Werke). The DWMs of WW1 are not far behind, especially the early ones, but some have had a hard life and the later ones seem to have been short on material quality. Some of the WW2 ‘Erfurt’ models have poor tolerances, with distinct clearances along the sides of the breech block

Certainly, these days, an early 20th C. Luger isn’t a good risk as a gun you expect to be available 24/7 and shoot thousands of rounds between serious stoppages.

That’s because bits break. When they do, the inside of the break has a grey, frosted appearance, as if the steel had gone crystalline, which I’m sure is at least in some cases the explanation.

The bit that probably breaks most often is the tiny curved lug under the extractor that hooks under the retaining pin. That means the extractor’s no longer held in the gun and flies off. It happens on firing - you won’t see it go, but you’ll know immediately when it does because the case will stovepipe and the pistol will fail to reload. Then it’s a matter of making safe and unloading, because shooting’s over for that Luger till you find the extractor (and its spring) and repair it. To do a repair, you need someone cute at welding, who can build up a little column of weld on and just behind the broken stub of the lug. Then you file the weld carefully until the extractor fits back into the breech block again in the correct position. Secure it there with parallel clamps. Use the breech block, with the extractor’s pin removed, as a drill jig to put a hole through the weld. If you’ve done it right, you should be able to get a complete loop of metal around the pin hole, and the repair will be sounder than the original component.

Ejector springs sometimes snap. Pretty much end of story - very difficult to repair or replace.

Occasionally the pivot pin where the front toggle link meets the breechblock will crack or break. I saw this happen on a long-barrelled 1917 Artillery Luger, and Radway Green Mk.IIz got the blame, whether fairly or not I’m not certain. The theory was that IIz was really for SMGs, and the Army regarded its Browning pistols as consumable - so long as they lasted a few hundred rounds, that was all that was necessary. A standard ground steel dowel (4mm x 15 IIRC?) available from engineers’ merchants - if you can still find one of them - will repair it. Otherwise you can turn a replacement from silver steel, harden it and temper it back to brown or purple, say 54 Rc. You could probably get way for a time without heat-treating it at all, but if it starts to shear again in unhardened condition, it’ll then be very hard to remove without doing further damage.

I’ve heard stories of the rear toggle-pin shearing, and the whole joint and breech block flying backward. In these stories, the whole assembly disappears over the shooter’s right shoulder without hitting anybody. However, I’m frankly inclined to discount them. No-one I’ve spoken to has ever claimed to have seen it personally - it’s always somebody else’s mate, like the Indian Rope Trick.

Pierced primers happened on mine occasionally, as a previous owner had flatted off the firing pin tip, and I didn’t realise how much damage they were doing until the striker spring retainer blew out of its bayonet fitting in the rear of the breech block. That again required some unbelievably delicate welding (by a mate who could) to repair the back of the block, using fireclay to prevent the bayonet fitting recesses from filling up. I made up a new silver steel firing pin on a watchmaker’s lathe and screwed it into a new tapping in the front of the striker, and had to do a similar job on the conical spring-guide that’s part of the retainer.

That got me another year of use, but what finally took my Luger out of service was a little flake spalling out of the back surface of the extractor claw. Crystalline steel again. That completely scuppered the extraction cycle and stopped the case ejecting every time, and only a new extractor could have repaired it.

By that time, I could no longer be bothered to find one.




Regards,
MikB

[Scrog]

Jolly interesting bit of gen on the 08.

I had a short one for a period and found that sand was its bete noir. I picked up a P38 and gave the 08 away.

The long artillery model with sliding back sight was amusing to shoot but ungainly to carry, IMHO.

11z ammo, as you say, was SMG ammo. Too hot for the 08, as was the German black case ammo. That was for the MP40.

Quick shooting the 4 inch was not too bad but for me it was too light up front for deliberste fire.

Scrog.

[MikB]

Originally posted by Scrog
...the German black case ammo. That was for the MP40.


The sintered iron bullet in those would do any barrel a heap of mischief. The stuff of desperation. I once saw some Eastern bloc 9mm ammo that was as bad - it had a steel bullet with peeling nickel plate and corrosive primers, and came in Mauser-type stripper clips (although it was 9x19). OTOH, Czech S&B 9mm was always excellent.

Regards,
MikB

[Scrog]

Originally posted by MikB
The sintered iron bullet in those would do any barrel a heap of mischief. The stuff of desperation. I once saw some Eastern bloc 9mm ammo that was as bad - it had a steel bullet with peeling nickel plate and corrosive primers, and came in Mauser-type stripper clips (although it was 9x19). OTOH, Czech S&B 9mm was always excellent.

Regards,
MikB

There was a lot of this rubbish going around in 61-63. Quite a few pistols were damaged beyond repair with cracked slides etc. It was being sold cheap of course so a lot of the more ignorant types fell for it.

Scrog

[MikB]

Luger’s trigger, too, deserves a little attention.

An American gun writer once said it worked through more angles than a politician’s mind.

It’s frequently described as ‘mushy’, but I think ’creaky’ is better.

It's true that its idiosyncrasy is due mainly to the number of components pivoted at right angles to each other in three different planes, and the play that can work into the mechanism at various points. The result on mine was a 4-stage trigger.

Firstly, there was a bit of simple lost motion in the trigger and, possibly, the bellcrank. The trigger’s return spring, though, pushes the trigger pivot pin (which is a protrusion on the trigger piece-part) forward in its recesses in the butt forging and the rectangular side plate. These recesses may have had clearances from the beginning, or may have worn slightly oval; either way there’s a distinct change in feel as your finger overcomes the spring pressure and the pivot settles to the top and back of its recesses with a tiny click sensation.

Now the trigger has a solid fulcrum to exert leverage on the bellcrank. I don’t think any Luger I’ve shot ever had noticeable play in the bellcrank pivot, perhaps partly because this is rarely disassembled. So the top arm of the bellcrank now bears more forcefully on the spring-loaded button in the sear. But this button reciprocates its full length every shot, and even in manufacture must have had a few thou clearance to do so freely. When the spring drives it to the limit of its movement as the trigger’s released from the previous shot, it will approximately have centred itself, but trapped between the lateral thrust of the bellcrank and the frictional resistance of the sear, it can tilt sideways, ever so slightly. This again produces a minute, but quite sharp, change of feel as the slight movement occurs.

In some examples, in a similar manner to the trigger and for similar reasons, slight changes of location happen on the sear pivot as it rotates, but this didn’t affect my particular example.

Then, finally, all backlash taken up, the sear can be dragged out of engagement with the striker. This bit you can do something about with a fine slipstone. It’ll still creep, but you can stop it grating.

Once you get used to it, you can learn to let off an individual Luger’s trigger quite precisely. The difficulty comes if you abort or delay a shot part way through, because not all the play may be reinstated as you release. When you start it again, you’ll usually find that at least one of the stages is now not there, unless you carefully pull the knobs up and back just far enough to let everything reset.

Regards,
MikB

[mje]

One of the nicest I ever had the chance to shoot was a Luftwaffe issue. It was stamped byf, and every serial number matched. The grips were jet black. The only marks on the piece were from wear in it's holster. The spare magazine evven contained the original ammunition issued to the Luftwaffe! I would guess somewhere between 500 - 1000 rounds maximum passed through it.

[Hornets Nest]

At the begining you mentioned these can be held on section 7 , does this mean a 9mm Luger can be owned or is it restricted to the 7.65 or 30 cal lugers , as i remember is it also the case only pre 1919 pistols can be owned under section 7?

i also seem to remember that section 7 is split into two catergories , if my memory serves me correctly its 7.1 and 7.3 , i am assuming this is down to either obsolete ammunition and still available ammunition to be used in either of the classes


can anyone elaborate on the section 7 and is it possable to be granted one these days or is it like squeesing blood out of a stone

Matt
A Luger and Borchardt Fan
ive collected many Luger nick naks over the years

[Dirty-Harry]

It's been some years since I owned a P'08 (1914 Ehrfurt manufacture - all matching numbers) but I recall it with some fondness. It rarely failed to shoot better than I could (not saying much I admit) and I came about 29th when I shot it at Bisley some time in the late 80's - despite dropping and losing a whole target!:mad:
The weak point on mine was the wooden base of the original mag, which was only pinned in place and tended to work loose at the most inoportune times.
If memory serves, the Luger was made in a variety of calibres during it's lifesapan. From .22 rim-fire all the way up to .45ACP. The latter was an attempt by Walther to win the US Army contract that finally went to the Colt 1911 A1. Not surprising as the design just wasn't up to those kind of pressures, tending to jam, break or just wear out too quickly, especially during the 'test to destruction while not cleaning the crud out of it' tests - or whatever they were called!:confused:
Nevertheless, get a good 'un, hand-load to reasonable pressures/velocities, use all lead or copper-jacketed ammo and it should last you out :D

[MikB]

Originally posted by Dirty-Harry
...all the way up to .45ACP. The latter was an attempt by Walther to win the US Army contract that finally went to the Colt 1911 A1. Not surprising as the design just wasn't up to those kind of pressures, tending to jam, break or just wear out too quickly, especially during the 'test to destruction while not cleaning the crud out of it' tests - or whatever they were called!:confused:


I haven't got a manual with me, but I think max. pressure for 9x19 is much higher than .45 ACP.

Take your point though. The real problem I'd think is simply the scale the gun's built to and the delicate nature of some of the bits. You'd have to make everything about 1/3 bigger just to accomodate .45 ACP without having some very thin walls.

As for crud-resistance - well, just looking at the precision fit of the breech block between its accurately-milled rails tells you that a good dollop of trench-mud here would put you out of shooting for 10 minutes or so - providing you didn't lose the cross-pin through the slats in the duckboards! :D :rolleyes:

Regards,
MikB

[arnie2b]

Your .45 original luger is one of the most expensive pistols u can get on planet earth so anyone know where there is one let me know ;) and want to hand it in on the safe.... ( valued at 1million usd btw )

In the states they even go through the trouble of making one out of two normal luger frames (last time I read about that anyway)

Arnie

[Hsing-ee]

My friend had a Luger Artillery - with the long 8" or whatever barrel and we spent a morning at Bisley blasting off 9mm British Army issue stuff through it. It had a HORRIBLE trigger but pointed where you looked and was pretty darn accurate with two hands. It seemed to kick higher than the Browning-style pistols, and jammed with a spent cartridge stuck in the toggle every ten shots or so. With the shoulder-stock attached it was very accurate little carbine, but overall I don't think it would be a great weapon to go to war with. A Webley .455 using single action would make me feel safer, but then I have never been a soldier.

Scarey looking piece of kit, but didn't really deliver. Browning HP far superior.

[MikB]

Originally posted by Hsing-ee
blasting off 9mm British Army issue stuff through it...
... jammed with a spent cartridge stuck in the toggle every ten shots or so.

2z is generally thought of as too hot for any pistol to run on as standard fodder, but especially so for anything old or classic.

The jamming looks like an ejector problem if it's failing to flip the empty clear, but could be spalls or wear on the back of the extractor claw causing it to ride out of the groove instead of pivot the case around it to eject.

Yes, Browning's GP35 is without doubt the better pistol, but it lacks the charisma...:D

Regards,
MikB

[Dirty-Harry]

Originally posted by Hsing-ee
...... A Webley .455 using single action would make me feel safer, but then I have never been a soldier.

If you had been a squaddy during WW1 or WW2 you would not have felt safer! It is said that the Webley (and the really crap auto version) killed far more deserters by shooting them in the back than it ever killed any enemy soldiers.

Also this design dates back to the Boer War and was so detested by a young Winston Churchill that he dumped his and swapped it for a Mauser!

[MikB]

.455's really a city calibre, I think, and a warm city at that. On unprotected humans it probably has an unrivalled combination of stopping-power with low risk of dangerous overpenetration or ricochet.

In a WW1 zone, with heavily-clad opponents festooned with harness, a cover-rich environment and most potential enemies not psychologically (or pharmacologically) hyped to a state of reduced vulnerability, I think a 9mm might be preferable. After all, the first requirement of combat stopping power has to be to get the bullet to your enemy, and 9mm FMJ will outpenetrate most of the competition.

Regards,
MikB

[Dirty-Harry]

Sorry, I should have specified earlier that the pressure I referred to was that on the breech-face. The .45 cartridge tended to kick the action back with such force that the rising elbow would eventually fracture sending lumps of steel shards in all directions - but mostly backwards into the face of the shooter!