I found a couple of good examples in my photo archive... and Dwight... you are absolutely right.

http://boards.rennlist.com/lfupload/gripcompare.jpg

There appears to be no good engineering reason for the step you have pointed out except as the top retaining shoulder for a grip safety. If they had eliminated this step then the grip frame backstrap could have been symmetrical at least IMHO.

Looks like they did it that way because they always did it that way and no one told them to change it. :rolleyes:

"we always did it that way" the last words of a dying business.

I am wondering a few things... There were other contracts that required grip safeties, so what is required to swtich from one type of gun to another.

I am specifically thinking of the Dutch guns, made until the 30's with a grip safety?

What other countries wanted a grip safety? Several still in the 20's and 30's?

I was thinking that was called the 1906 model, and what does that mean? I will look it up, but if others know off the top of their head what differences were in manufacturing???

My thought process is that it was a smart thing to continue some oddities. In Jan's book Weimar Lugers, it states that the police armoury (sp) kept artillery stocks on hand to test fire 4 inch Lugers. Here in America they are illegal, but in Germany and other countries, they have target contests using stocks latched onto 4 inchers... So, maybe it was left on for a useful purpose. Maybe we are thinking like Americans that it is illegal and it isn't and wasn't there, so it extends the usefulness of a gun?

Ed

Dwight and John, I doubt that little step was just a holdover. If you look closely, you will see that if the left side were contoured the same as the right, not only would the machining for the safety be more complex, but there would not be enough frame support for the left hand end of the recoil lever pin.

Jim

Jim,

That might be true if the left side of the grip strap was machined away evenly at the depth of the grip safety cut. But, consider this (a speculation): it would be "easier" to -not- cut away material to make this inset, thereby obviating the safety and recoil lever pin support problems.

--Dwight

Dwight,
Consider, The lower grip of the frame is symetrical up to the step that you speak of.
To not cut the lower portion and leave it even with the step, destroys the symetricity of the lower grip and leaves us two wooden grips of different thickness. Not to speak of the problems it would develope in the rest of the left side of the grip frame. UGH !Ugly Lookin Gun !.
ViggoG

I think these pistols look pretty darn good for a design that is for all intents and purposes over a 100 years old! :)

I think it is pretty safe to say that whatever the reason, pure appearance and symetrics were not among them. We may consider a Luger a work of art today, but in 1900, the manufacturers thought of them as (ugh!) guns!

Jim