I have to ask... reproduction Lugers?

[rightwire]

Originally posted by tacfoley
Dear Mr rightwire - You wrote - 'Obiviously these would be no more collectable than on of the italian made reproduction Colt Peacemakers. But I sould surely rather shoot the $250 knock off than an original historic Peacemaker.'

You are obviously labouring under the impression that cheap copy of a Luger can be made by anybody on earth, with our present state of technology.

A quick squint at the products of Mr Krause should prove to be a wake-up call, if it were needed.

There is no way on earth that a Luger could be replicated without the original tooling - in other words, starting from a bare set of drawings and going on from there - for less than around $15K.

A company that actually HAS the tooling - the so-called Krieghoff endeavour - requires you to part with a very large proportion of that sum.

Add to the already complex machining [necessary to make every single part of the Luger] the amount of hand-fitting required to get it to function reliably with a range of modern ammunition, and you are looking at a very special item indeed.

The stainless steel 'Lugers' use a very high proportion of investment castings - the original used nothing but drop-forgings of the very highest quality - even the toggle pins were forged. On the other paw, the investment cast 'near-to-size' frame of a stainless 'Luger' weighs within an ounce of the finished part - the real thing starts off as a drop-forged piece of the highest grade steel imaginable that weighs over three pounds - the rest is machined away until it looks like the frame. It was said that DWM actual produced immense piles of high-grade swarf, with pistols as a waste product.

Cheap Lugers will never happen.

Live with it.

tac

I didn't intend to turn this into a heated debate. It was a simple question.

As an Engineer I am quite familiar with the manufacturing process as my industry deals with all facets of manufacturing. Considering the state of CNC machining, and the process required to produce firearms that are mostly machined (SIG Sauer, etc), it would not appear that a Luger would take (significantly) more manufacturing time than a high end machined pistol.

Would it retail in the $250 range? Probably not, by comparison a knock off peacemaker is a pretty easy thing to machine. Would it be worth $750 to have a solid shooter that mimic's the performance of your collector Luger, but keeps the piece thats really worth money safe from wear and accidental damage? I am not sure.. its why I tossed it out there.