Question about black widow Lugers and wooden grip guns

[mrerick]

I bought one of Ralph's specials from a MidWestern buyer whom Ralph sold on the mystique of the "black widow"...

It did, in fact, come with original bakelite grips... except that the left one was actually a type 1 Brown Ritzmann grip that Ralph had carefully lacquered black`.....

The black goo came off cleanly with the right chemical cleaning... I still have that grip available should anyone need it for a Krieghoff where it belongs.

The one thing that does make bakelite grips and magazine bases useful is that they are not numbered (except for the magazines of the Ku pistols). That means that you can suddenly have a "matching" Luger by replacing wood grips and aluminum based magazines with the Bakelite variety. That is why these parts are expensive.