Clark/Thor Heavy Barrel Target Luger
 

Hugh just sent me a 4" bull barrel target Luger to rust blue. This little sweety will be test fired for accuracy and I believe he intends to sell it. Base shooter is a mismatched 1939 S/42 Mauser. Barrel has NO TAPER and has a diameter of around 8/10". This should be a real shooter, the barrel is stock new. I think he has some other target ammenities to add, he talked about a trigger stop to reduce travel. Kinda reminds me when Ruger took their standard twenty two and put a heavy barrel on it. Standing in the offhand position, the gun really holds steady! Keep an eye out for this one in a few weeks.

We also have a 6" bull bbl in the works. This gun feels heavy when you pick it up, but holds very steady when you aim it, no "light muzzle wobble" here! Plan on putting both guns on Gunbroker after Ted's refinish, a trigger tuneup, and sight in.

Hugh,

What kind of sights are on these Lugers? Have you done any trigger work?

Al,

Front sight will be a Marbles or Lyman gold or ivory bead, rear sight notch filed into a "U" shape. I am smoothing and tightening the trigger pull to remove much of the slack and give a smooth let off.

Hugh

Hugh,

Sign me up if you can recess a good modern adjustable sight into the toggle. I don't care for the long overhang on the S&W sight on your Armadillo gun.

Since our last communication, I've been examining adjustable rear sights with the dream of adapting them to the Luger toggle without a lot of overhang to the rear. The Luger toggle link is only about 1" long by 0.5" wide. The movable part of a Bomar sight is about 1.3" long and might work well (with a small overhang) but it is 0.45" wide, probably too wide to be recessed into the toggle. The S&W sight is only 0.25" wide but 2.7" long. It might work OK if the flexible part were high strength spring steel which could be shortened to 1" or so, but I don't think it is.

Brownells doesn't have anything that looks promising. Colt put a very compact adjustable sight on their pre-war national match .45s. It would be great if you could get one of these (probably way too much expense).

Oh well, just dreaming--that's a lot easier than producing hardware as you and Ted do. Keep up the good work.

Al,

I have several different adjustable sights (Bomar, Micro, Meg Gar, S&W & MMC). So far the old style MMC for the 1911 looks the most promising. I have managed to accumulate a half dozen or so of these. I have dovetailed one of these into a rear toggle and it seems to be working ok.
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I haven't decided whether to try to add this option to these two guns or not.

Hugh,

How about E-mailing me or posting a picture of the MMC on a Luger toggle (if it's not too much trouble)?

I have installed a number of Bomarsigths on the lugertoggles and that works great.
But there is a overhang, but I do really belive that no other adjusatble sight can take the pounding and the stress from the lugertoggle.
IT's much more severe than the stress from a 1911 slide.

http://www.vapensmedjan.com/customluger_4.htm

Regards HÃ?Â¥kan

Sorry Hakan, that's not what I am looking for. Thanks for posting your Bomar/Luger pictures anyway.

Rick,

Can you post some pictures. I like the idea of a shortened S&W sight recessed into the toggle. Perhaps it could be adjusted for elevation by mounting a screw below it at the back end with a relatively large head. This would be accessed through a smaller hole. It could be attached at the front end by a screw similar to the original attachment screw. Then to change elevation, one would loosen the front screw, turn the screw under the sight by reaching through the hole, then tighten the front sight which would also serve as a lock screw.

Rick,

Sounds like your interests and mine are similar. I would like to see a scan of your whole gun with this sight. Yes, a grooved toggle seems desirable to me. I suppose a set of shims to mount under the sight might be another (crude) way to get an elevation adjustment.

I love the installation on my 1911 by Bob Day about 20 years ago. The end product is no more bulky than the stock sight, but obviously more fragile than the stock sight. I can live with that since I don't plan to drop it, but I'll fix it if I do.

Rick... very interesting... please post a photo of your rear sight installation for the engineer in all of us...

thanks...

MAny problems with adjustable sights on toggles comes up after some thousands rounds.
SIghts get sloppy and with a big play and suddenly they just crack.

I have had a bomar destroyed to but not as fast as some other sights. And i have installed a number of Bomars.

The smartest thing would probably be to have the elevation in the front sight and the windage in the rearsight and that way both make a pretty rear sight and much more sturdy sight.

Regards HÃ?Â¥kan

Guys,

I finally got around to examing the reat sight on my Ruger .44. It is only about an inch long and the forward part is 5/16" wide. It looks possible to recess this into a Luger toggle. What do you think?

We once tried the well made sigth from Bowen.
Those are made to fit direktly into a rugerrevolver and they are wery well made.

But it didnt take many rounds to ruin the sight so i think its better to not try.
It's also difficult to install one without an overhang.

Regards HÃ?Â¥kan

HÃ?Â¥kan,

If you can tell us, what are the dynamics involved in these failures?

--Dwight

On a 1911 slide the sights just goes back and forward again, in a .44 magnum revolver there is almost no tough forces as all as everything happends so slowly.

But a luger pistol is problably the 9mm pistol that have the fastest cycle time of all semiautos because the parts are so low weight and the recoilspring is so heavy.
When installing a adj. sight on the toggle it tipps back and forward extremely fast and this movement is extremely difficult for a sigth.

Regards HÃ?Â¥kan

Hakan,

You may well be right. Still, it should be possible to design a sight that would work. I am a mechanical engineer and I can imagine what some of your results were. Can you post any details or pictures?

Nevertheless, it should be possible to make a GOOD copy of a Ruger sight from titanium or Inconel that would hold up (of course I probably wouldn't want to pay for it). If they just broke, the metal is probably some junk casting.

I forgot to add something about the attaching method. I suspect the attaching screw may be a problem, if not that, then any threaded hole in the toggle might strip. Also, pins used in elevation systems could be weak points.

It is shame that a front adjustable sight wouldnt work, all Luger barrels have dove tails and most sights work with those.

AGE,
Please take the advice of an old NASA Designer,
Loose the Inconel, That is bad stuff.
The very things that make it seem desirable, Tough and Rust resistant. Also make it Lousy for production and succeptable to seizing up.The Older Nickel Alloys in my book are bad medicine.
Look to 17-4 PH or some of the other new and better machining Precipitation Hardening Steels.
The have the added advantage of being able to harden any of the rubbing parts to differing hardness and thereby diminishing the galling problem.
ViggoG

In my poinion adjustable rear sights will be best for bull barrel lugers, as the front sights tends to be very high oteherwise.
So Thor's idea with a adjustable front sight is problably the best and then make the front sight so you do the elevation on that and a rear sight for windage.

Bowen and bomar sights are made from barstock steel and is of very high quality, Ruger sights are some cheap alu **** and is not recomended.

The sight problem is not the material, its the stresses caused by the toggle.

We havent had any attaching problems as the bomars and the bowens was silversolderd on.
Screws will deffinitley not work in the long run.

Regards HÃ?Â¥kan

HÃ?Â¥kan, Age, Thor,
I have an old "H&R SPORTSMAN" which has an Elevating Front Sight that is adjusted by screwing a modified allen screw along the barrel axis under the front sight.
Very "Simple" and with some changes could probably be made to work very good.
This accompanied by a horizontal dovetailed rear sight that adjusts similsr to a 4 jaw lathe chuck might just do the job.
If you are interested I will be glad to make a rough sketch and E-mail it to Thor who can post it in this column.
ViggoG

I guess I'll stick to my 1911s for adjustable sights. Sounds like they are too much trouble on Lugers. Still.... Anyway, who knows what someone may come up with.

Would it not be possible to mount the sights on an inverted U shape bridge attached to the frame, but which does not contact the toggle.

I have a Vostok MCM Margolin .22 which uses such an arrangement to aid in keeping the sights aligned. Doing the same thing on a Luger might not look too aestheticically pleasing, but it would mean the sights wouldn't get beat up by the toggle action.

Where would you put this margolin type bridge arjen? I don't see how you could do this except forward of the toggle...and you need that space for ejection of the empty cases...

That toggle sure uses a lot of space when in motion. How about posting a sketch of your concept?

The only real successful adjustable iron sights (other than HÃ?Â¥kan Spuhr's custom Bomar sights) are the original Navy sight, and the original Artillery sight that is mounted on the rear of the barrel.

The other successful adjustable rear iron sight is the MMC miniature sight, which some of the guys mentioned in the posts above, that was available in the '70s. It was designed by MMC, which was then located in the little town of Deming, NM, and was made up special for Skeeter Skelton. The sight was featured in an article by Skeeter "For Love of a Long Barreled Luger" in, I believe, Shooting Times. Unfortunately a lot of my reference material is in storage right now, so I can't locate the article. In it, Skeeter told of his build up of a 6" barreled Luger on which he installed this special sight. It was only approximately 1/2-inch wide and also worked well on PPKs. MMC marketed the sight for a time as the "Skelton Special", but it has been out of production for a long time. It was dovetailed into the rear toggle link and was adjustable only in windage, but it was a really slick little sight.

Recently I contacted MMC to see if any old stock was available. Unfortunately MMC has changed hands, there are no more "Skelton Specials" in their old inventory, and they have no plans to re-issue it. Perhaps if more of us bugged MMC so that they would know there is at least a semi-substantial limited market (oxymoron?) they might consider running off a few. One can hope.

Sights aside, what does it take in the way of ammo to make a bull barreled Parabellum work? All else being equal, a heavier barrel implies more impulse required to cycle the action. Of course there would be the same question with a long barrel, but at least the long barrel tends to produce more velocity which produces more impulse. From what I've heard, the weight of a long barrel goes up faster than the impulse so they like spiffy loads.

US,that is what I thought too, but even with the 6" version Hugh told me it worked with standard ammo.

I have built a number of bull barrel lugers now and none that I have built have worked with standard ammo until the recoilspring was changed.

We built a 10.5"semi bull barrel luger that also got a gaskick installed.
the gaskick is bleeding out gas from underneath the barrel and working against a pin that puches on the foreend iron.
That was a must to get that gun to work with standard ammo.

Regards HÃ?Â¥kan

HÃ?Â¥kan,

Nice to hear from you after such a long time.

Thanks John

Regards HÃ?Â¥kan