Here's my submission for favorite shooter.

This is my Ruger Old Army .45 caliber cap and ball revolver. The grips are imitation ivory from Dixie Gunworks and are engraved with my initials. I looked into having some custom metal engraving done, but found the cost extremely prohibitive.

Charged with 30 grains of "Triple Seven," six to eight inches of red flame issues forth from the muzzle followed by a loud "ker-boom" and an impressive cloud of white smoke. The recoil is gentle and on a good day, I can put six out of six inside a 4" circle at fifty feet.

The Luger "commercial" shooter I purchased from Hugh Clark comes in a close second and provides a very nice technical contrast to the Ruger.

Dave in TN.

Here's my other "shooter..."

It's a .44 caliber "screw barrel" boot pistol that uses 12 grains of black powder.

At 20 feet, it will put a ball through a sheet of 3/4" plywood. But that's assuming that you can hit the sheet of plywood at 20 feet (notice the lack of front and rear sights.) The effective range of this pistol is about five feet which is roughly the distance across a poker table.

I would hate to be caught with an ace up my sleeve and be on the receiving end of this piece....

That's either a very small gun or some gigantic hands;)

Hehe, i like it, does look like fun ^

Rick,

Very interesting post ... thanks!

When I shoot my .30 with Starline Brass I usually call a "cease fire" and the other guys stand back behind the red line and allow me to sweep my brass back behind the line.

Heck, I sweep all the brass back from the indoor range and do a bit of a clean up so I usually only loose about 2-5% to where the heck did it go? .... or sometimes less.

Shooting outdoors makes it harder to find the spent brass.

Mark

Rick, you always write such interesting articles slanted toward the unusual engineering aspects of Lugers. I enjoy them thoroughly... especially the photos... thanks for your contribution!

Rick,
You have passion! Thanks
Piet

Great article Rick, interesting reading. Sounds like you are close to having your own 'wildcat':)
I know you love the 7.65mm Luger, but have you concidered making a barrel in 7.63mm Mauser ?

Waffen Wele have posted some of his creations on Youtube. Thought you guys might enjoy watching these;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8htM...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOVNX...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQsaeeoRm_s

Shown it before, but this is my standard shooter. Reliablility is unbelievable. And it's more accurate than my eyes :)

Painting a Luger with Duracoat definitively puts it in the non-collectable category.. Sorry if it causes any nightmare :)

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Steiner,
Bizarre and cool !
Three colors of duracote?
Duracote fill defects in metal?
Thanks for sharing
Bill

I like it, in a twisted kind of way :D

I think that the sand color especially looks good.

My one and only Luger so far, a 1917 Erfurt. It is all matching except the magazine. It was buffed, re-blued and broken when I got it. It shoots well with W-W white box. Joe

Nice Luger JCP! With some original valnut grips, I would call it a collectable.


For my Duracoated Luger, I used the left overs from this project. It's three colours of "tactical matte", which is a non-reflectable colour.

The idea was to make a camouflage pattern without actually beeing so (on the Ruger that is). Also, as the rifle is intended for hunting and not self defence, so I wanted to make it bit less "military looking". Painstaking work ..and it would probably be a better result if I just knew when to stop ;)

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A refinished double-date DWM one which I bought last weekend, with what I think is a WW2 era barrel (somewhat rusted in the past. alas)

http://www.fototime.com/56EB404B2EBF1E6/standard.jpg

http://www.fototime.com/E319950CBEFB5AD/standard.jpg

http://www.fototime.com/87F21ADCE8C258A/standard.jpg

http://www.fototime.com/B6ED9903515EFAC/standard.jpg

Shooter Luger and Target
 

This is my shooter Luger from a few replies above. The target is a 100, 6X from 10 yards using W-W White Box 115 grain. The trigger is not the greatest but I jerked the three that are not in the group. I haven't shot it at 25 yards because of the tiny sights and my middle aged eyes. Joe

This is my 1916 shooter I recently acquired. It is all matching except the magazine. It has been buffed and re-blued. Shoots great and I don't have to worry about my 1938 S/42 my dad brought home.

1940 chrome P08 GI bring-back given to me by a lady with whom my wife works. She inherited this from her father, who brought it back from WW2. She couldn't tell me much about it, except that it had no mag (I have since bought a Mec-Gar) and that her dad didn't tell her many war stories, but that he told her it suited him just fine going ashore on D-Day wearing one of the Germans own Lugers to use against them. She said he got a big kick out of that.

1940
42 on top
ser # 27
655 grips, no orig mag
all matching numbers


Obviously it was in rough shape, and still shows the pits from the rust it had before being plated. There's deep pitting at the rest for the trigger finger.
It is all-matching numbers except of course for the missing mag. It wore walnut grips when I got it, smooth ones, that I thought were some made after the war. But after reading here, and getting out the magnifying glass (and my strongest reading glasses-HA!) I see a tiny emblem, and a 655 below it, on the back of the grips. I do not see a serial number on the back of the grips. They have almost no checkering, are very smooth, oil-soaked at the top. Also, they appear to have been painted white at one time, as there is what looks to be white paint in some of the pores of the wood. When my camera batteries are charged, I'll get more pics. I currently have some repro black plastic grips on it, as the walnut grips are a bit loose.


It has the bolt-hold-open in it. Most of the markings that should be on it are gone, like the ones on the right side of the receiver. It is smooth. The only marking on the outside is the eagle on the left side of the toggle (being in a recessed area, it escaped the buffer), the number 27, 1940, and a 42. Inside are all sorts of markings and proofs.

{I have to wonder, given the almost complete lack of any German or Nazi markings on it, if they were removed deliberately.}

It shoots very well, feeding WWB 115 gr flawlessly, both FMJ and HP. At 7 yards it put 4 bullets in a tight cloverleaf circle, with one hole being overlapped by the other 3 around it, an old metal baking sheet with the HP. I haven't had a jam in a couple hundred FMJs and a hundred or more HPs over the course of about a year.

http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/g...o/DSC03951.jpg
http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/g...o/DSC03940.jpg

'Looks like I'm going to resurrect this old thread. Here's a photo of my "shooter" (recently discussed in the New Collectors Forum):

Wow! You almost have to wear sunglasses to look at it.

1937 S/42 Mauser made Luger Shooter...
 

This all matching 1937 S/42 Mauser made Luger is a shooter by virtue of the pitting... It has outstanding accuracy and functions well.

I've brought it to many of the courses I teach, and lots of people have fired their first Luger with it... I save it till the end of class range time as a special treat for the students!

Yep. My father made the grips around 1948. 'Sort of a varient of sweetheart grips. It's a 1942 byf, all matching numbers (except the magazine) but it's been polished and reblued so it's not a collector gun. I fired it yesterday for what was likely the first time since WWII. It performed flawlessly until I tried some JHP's in and got a couple FTF's. In the future it will just see ball ammo.

Well my P08 shooter certainly lives up to this definition!

In 1975 I was hot to get a Luger. I looked at all the pretty ones, authentic and the post-war Mausers, but they were out of my price range. Then I stumbled across an ugly duckling at a pawn shop. The price was the lowest I'd seen for a P08, I think $150, but even I as a novice could tell it was a parts gun. The frame and toggle assembly were DWM and the barrel and plum colored receiver were from a 1938 S/42 Mauser. Counting up all the mismatched numbers, the parts came from about 15 different P08s! But it met my requirements: Luger, cheap and 9mm.

Surprisingly it turned out to be a reliable shooter with thousands of rounds over 30+ years and only one broken part, the big rear axle pin which of course was an easy fix.

Then I bought a DWM 1913 barreled receiver on eBay so was able to turn the pistol into period correct WWI Luger (though it still had parts from about 15 different Lugers). Later I found a complete S/42 marked toggle assembly to complete the 1938 Mauser barreled receiver. I got very lucky, both uppers (with either toggle assembly) function reliably on the DWM frame. None of the parts have been refinished or reblued since there is no point.

So I can have a WWI shooter or change uppers to have what appears to be a WWII shooter (the frame is not).

Of course it was a dumb way to go about it and lucky it worked. I should have sold the mixmaster and bought something better but it's hard to sell a working shooter for peanuts then hope to find something better that may or may not work as well.

Now my other P08, a lightly used 1941 byf, is too valuable to shoot so guess which one is more fun! :thumbup:

Hello Luger friends,

to put this thread a bit allive again.

This is my shooter 1916/1920 and i am a reloader with a nice working lead bullit load of N320. This round works also in my classic C96 RedNine:rockon::rockon:

greetings from Bavaria

bigbuck

Looks like a darn nice "shooter", thanks for posting and welcome to the board.

I agree!!

Thank you and yes its a nice one.

It may sounds odd but for me this is somehow also a piece of art..like the C96.

The 1911 on the other side is just a "efective brutal fighting piece":evilgrin::evilgrin:

My 5 cent


br


Bigbuck

Welcome and very true.

1911 = brick; luger = fine dagger, JMHO.:evilgrin:

I also happen to like shooting the "brick". :evilgrin:

I wish my Lugers were as reliable/dependable as my "bricks".......I still love them anyway!!

I like shooting my bricks also, but they are still bricks.
Some bricks are as finicky as a fine luger; conversley, a couple of my lugers won't stop for anything/

But on average a brick is pretty "forgiving", kind of like a hand grenade. ;)

My shooter Lugers are as relialeble as my most accurate "brick" (STI). And almost as relialble as my WW II (there's no way it will fail) "brick".

The price of reliability being:

Best group of "old faithfull" 4 to 6" at 25 meters.

Best group of STI 1,5 to 2" at same distance.

Both off hand one hand shooting.

Exactly; and don't foget the "brick" rattles a little. :p

I have a 1944 Colt 1911A1 that does rattle some, but it is like the "EverReady Bunny" and just runs and runs and runs!!

This one has a DWM 1906 receiver, an 06/29 barrel and a post-war Swiss mag. Barrel work by GT, refinished receiver and barrel courtesy Thor, stocks redone by Jim Solomon. Quite the shooter.
Bob

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/i...psoetnqflj.jpg

Remarkable! :thumbup:

After Fireing My 1914 DWM Artillery
 

And being admonished for fireing a very rare luger, George Anderson sold me a beautiful shooter. It has an Austrian barrel and Haenel Schmeisser mag! Last month I finally fired my first luger! Eric

Hmmm...I like that. Looking good!
Bob

I agree!!