LugerForum Discussion Forums - No blue pin on wood-bottom mag

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- - No blue pin on wood-bottom mag (https://forum.lugerforum.com/showthread.php?t=6566)

Hmm,

I got one just like that, with blued pin. It came with the dutch M11 (pictures in the gallery) and all I can see is worn off blueing in the centre of the pin (on both sides), probably caused by generous use of the pin punch for cleaning purposes...

I'll have this mag insured separately, as it now seems to sell for about half the amount i paid for both the gun and 2 mags....

Oh, Wes. I agree. I don't use this mag, but use the replacement blued mag that also came with the gun and I recently bought a new MecGar as well.

I'm currently looking for an extra shooter to avoid wear to the M11 as well, since our 'fantastic' gun laws actually force us to use the guns on a regular basis.

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Big Norm:
Hey John, your getting pretty good at that forensic science. You must be watching a lot of that detective stuff of cable TV.

But lets suppose something else. If you found a matching magazine for one of your prized Lugers but you suspected that the bottom had been changed to an appropriate tube but not otherwise altered, would that change the way you feel about the magazine? Would you still be willing to pay a higher price for the matchup?

A second question that I would like to ask is if you accidentally dropped a matching mag to one of your prized Lugers on the garage floor and then ran over it with your car crushing everything but the wood bottom, would you throw out he entire ruined magazine or try to mount the wood bottom on an appropriate other tube?
Big Norm<hr /></blockquote>Okay Norm, let me see if I can answer these questions in the correct sequence ...

It all started when I first read the Sherlock Holmes series more decades ago than I care to admit... Add to that all the other mystery and spy novels I have read during the years since that time... add a decade or two of gunsmithing, restoration and repairs. Toss in some hands on Industrial Engineering and Manufacturing, and top it off with the latest re-runs of CSI and nearly five years discussing the techniques of forgery in rare Lugers on this forum and six to seven years experience in digital photography and I have adequate background for some investigative forensics... not to mention that I enjoy it. :)

2nd answer to your Questions: Unless the mag bottom were installed in an "appropriate" tube with a ROLL pin, how would you ever determine that the set were not original? Punch marks on the head of the pin? That would be a toughie... I would probably be just as happy with the mag because I guess it would be no different that an armorer's repair by canibalizing two otherwise useless magazines into one functional one.

#3...Since I don't own any collector grade Lugers I don't think situation three would make that much difference to me personally... but to the hobby, and to those who trust their fortunes and their sacred honor to collecting Lugers, I guess I would be saddened by the NECESSITY to marry a good and matching wooden bottom to a functional and appropriate magazine tube. I can imagine that if you were a Soldier and you found it necessary to return your military issued P.08 to the arms depot for "work" without magazines but with an appropriate requisition form, you would eventually get it back with two NEW and matching numbered magazines...

I think we often confuse and misuse the terms "matching" - "original" - "authentic" and "correct" in this hobby.

Here is one more situation for you... you are a soldier who has just had his two magazines run over by your own tank (sort of a friendly fire incident) and one tube is mashed flat and the other mag has had the ears broken off the mag bottom by the event... If you have the unit armorer put the good bottom on the good tube, are we now out of the "collectible" arena as far as this mag is concerned... or how would the eventual heirs ever know that this happened?

All of these situations are nothing like the intentional deception practiced by SOME purveyors of antique masterpieces like our precious Lugers, at most they are honest attempts to maintain functionality in a service sidearm with as much "originality" as is possible and practical.

John,
I love Sherlock Holmes too. Columbos right up there too. I even like all the reruns by both of these people. I have seen a couple of your forensic posts and you seem to be getting better each time. Keep it up. Maybe you have a calling here.

I truely understand and appreciate Wes and his Luger purism. An original Luger is preferred to a restored Luger. Hands down. But I do believe that there is a place in our collecting for the restoration artist. The artist who makes an ugly duckling look "new in box" without alterations or misrepresentation of the gun or its parts. I do NOT believe that there is any place here or anywhere for hackers, counterfeiters and others who misrepresent our prized topic. But I don't believe that recheckering original grips or restaining them is wrong. I don't think that putting an original unaltered bottom unto an appropriate, original, unaltered tube is wrong either. But I don't think that putting that pin in and stamping a head on it without bending the tube is as easy as it looks.
Big Norm

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Big Norm:
...But I don't believe that recheckering original grips or restaining them is wrong. I don't think that putting an original unaltered bottom unto an appropriate, original, unaltered tube is wrong either. But I don't think that putting that pin in and stamping a head on it without bending the tube is as easy as it looks.
Big Norm <hr /></blockquote>How true Norm... one only has to look at the old trashy mexican origin reproduction Luger magazines to see that even manufacturing these mags "new" requires finesse and the RIGHT TOOLS. I have owned a couple of these old aluminum bottom mexican mags and they were nothing but trouble... they often have the appearance of being made by convicts with files and hammers that don't have a polished face :D

A hobby is a pure expression of ourself: what we strive for and value in our character, what we demand of ourselves, the degree of compromise that we will accept, etc. If we accept things that are bogus, are happy with substitution, and are not descriminating, a hobby will not change us, only allow expression of our values.
Some have the hobby of shooting, some the hobby of selling, some the hobby of collecting, etc. Lugers comprise more than a single category of hobby.

I do not think I would categorize Wes's position as "purism" but as an honest historian. When you take a Luger with an unmatched magazine and install a renumbered magazine you have tampered with the history of the piece. And to have a rare difference of opinion with John S, when the Imperial army sent a pistol off for new magazines I think they took whatever came back, and doubt they were matched until Weimar era reissues. For instance I have a Haenel Schmeisser mag with a wood bottom numbered to the 1915 dated police reissue pistol. Probably a salvage of the original part and a new mag body. Should I stick a pristeen sheet metal tube with a *K on the old base. A large piece of the pistol's history would be lost. I would bet that whoever purchases the blank bottomed mag will not mark it "purchased on EBay - 2003.

If I wanted a replacement that looked proper for a comercial, thia mag could be OK. To modify it into another use I find questionable. What do you tell a prospective purchaser? And you have altered the real history of the mag and the pistol