Lugers: an iconic arm

Guns Magazine, August, 2008 by Mike "Duke" Venturino

One of the prerogatives of being a freelance gun'riter is I'm not tied into one area of interest. With some gun magazines whose writers are contracted, their editors actually resist letting them step away from a pre-set "persona." GUNS Magazine just lets me follow my nose or perhaps better expressed, my curiosity, wherever it leads me.

This month it's Lugers. Why Lugers? Well it went like this. A couple of years back the Montana winter seemed ceaseless. In March the wind was still blowing the snow sideways so shooting was out of the question. For entertainment I started browsing a couple of the Internet firearms auction sites. Somehow I ended up in a section on Lugers and one chambered for the .30 Luger caught my eye. It looked clean in the photos and wasn't priced outlandishly as a "buy it now" item so I did.

Luger Newbie

In my entire lifetime of shooting I don't remember ever previously firing a Luger, and know for sure I'd never pulled the trigger on a 30-caliber one. Upon arrival it proved to be all that it had been billed--beautiful condition with all matching serial numbers but with a set of most probably replacement grips. I ran down to my local gun store for a box of .30 Luger cartridges and that's when I first began to wonder if I had made a mistake. Those Winchester rounds loaded with 93-grain FMJ bullets were priced at $28.29 for 50 rounds (it's more than double that now). When checking other stores to see if the competition had cheaper prices, I found this box of .30 Lugers were about the only ones in this entire area of Montana. I bought them, fired some, and found my new Luger functioned perfectly and actually hit pretty close to point of aim at 50'.

[ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED]

Knowing almost nothing about Lugers I set out to at least learn exactly what I had bought. With a 3-3/4" barrel length, DWM on the toggle and Germany on the front of the frame the books said it had been made at the well-known Deutsche Waffen und Munitions factory and built exclusively for export. In fact the collectors call it the Model 1920 Export model.

A visit to Cartridges Of The World, 9th Edition gave the information that the 7.65x21mm (.30 Luger) round had been introduced in 1900 and it, along with the Luger design of handgun, had been adopted at one time or the other by the militaries of Switzerland, Brazil, Bulgaria and Portugal. Nominal factory ballistics were said to be 1,220 fps with the 93-grain FMJ bullet. (For comparison consider this. Colt only began to warranty the Peacemaker for smokeless powder ammunition in 1900.)

Good enough! So I ordered 500 rounds of Starline brass, some 85-grain Sierra. 308" bullets, and a set of Redding reloading dies. Lyman even has cast and jacketed bullet data in their latest 48th Edition reloading manual. Then I ran into a snag. Trying the recommended powders such as Bullseye, W231, Red Dot and Unique only the latter would function the .30 Luger reliably, and only then with a maximum charge. The load was 5.0 grains of Unique with the 85-grain Sierra bullet. Also overall loaded cartridge length was found to be critical: rounds longer than 1.14" would not feed.

Scratching around in my shelves full of bullet moulds I found RCBS mould No. 32-84RN. Cast of linotype and sized to .313" those little bullets chambered perfectly, fed reliably, and shot accurately over a charge of 4.4 grains of W231. (That's also a maximum load so don't copy me directly.) This load clocked 1,221 fps and will group between 2" and 3" at 25 yards.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

OK, I got it to shoot reliably and accurately so my interest waned and I gave serious thought to selling the Luger. In fact at a gun show I approached a fellow with several other Lugers on his table with the intention of seeing if he was interested in buying. As sometimes happens to me at gun shows things didn't go exactly according to plan because when I walked away from his table I owned two Lugers. The new one was a 9mm made in 1938 and carrying a number of military markings indicating it had belonged to the German army during World War II. Since I'm putting together a collection of World War II small arms, how could I resist it?

Finicky 9mm

My newest Luger has a 4" barrel with a code of S/42 atop the toggle link. A little research showed the marking indicated it had been manufactured by Mauser at their Oberndorf factory in Germany. Overall it is in excellent condition but with a few small spots of pitting spread here and there, most probably picked up from being outdoors in weather and carried in a leather holster. It was the Germans' habit at this time to put the last two digits of the serial number on about every part in a Luger. With this one they all still match including the one on the magazine. From what I have learned about military Lugers so far, having a magazine with serial number matching the pistol itself is a cause for true joy.

Something else I have learned about 9mm Lugers is something I have often read also. That is that they are very finicky about the ammunition they will feed reliably. The first factory loads tried through it were some with 115-grain hollowpoint bullets. Not a single one of them would travel from magazine into chamber. So being the clever fellow I am, some scrounging around in my ammo shed netted me a box of Hornady factory loads with 124-grain roundnose FMJ bullets. They functioned perfectly.