new luger = painful question...
 

Hi, I recently purchased my first Luger. It's a surplus Finn Luger, and I have a question regarding cocking this maching. when I pull the slide back to **** the pistol I have to use so much force that my fingers are raw and sore after a couple of magazines. Is this normal? Is there some technique that I should be aware of? I am new to Lugers, so any advice would be apprechiated. Here's a photo.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ler/luger2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...gler/luger.jpg

naugler,
Lugers can be somewhat stiff in the operation of the toggle, but not to the point of causing pain. I would have your Luger checked out to be sure it's in proper working order and not experiencing some sort of mechanical binding. If you are referring to loading the magazine, then yes you do need a magazine tool if you are going to load the magazine more than once or twice in a row.
DougT

Take the gun apart and see if the toggle binds in the receiver. If so it could be warped. Also it could be a very strong recoil spring? Unless you have delicate skin it should take no more than 20lb pull weight to open one.

Thanks for the replies, the gun has been checked by a smith and is working fine. It's likely a really stiff recoil spring. I wouldn't say I'm "delicate" but my thumb and first finger are a bit sore today. It's likely just my technique. Any other advice?
thanks

Re: new luger = painful question...
 

Scott, I suspect that we are missing something here. If your pistol is functioning correctly, firing two magazines off should require no more than two manual charges of the weapon. Are you having to manually **** the pistol each time you fire a round?

Painful question
 

I had a Luger that did the same thing, really hard to operate the toggles. I took it apart and 'miked' the reciever rails at thier rear most area. The correct measurement should be 13mm between the rails at that point, mine was 11mm!
How it got that way is a mystery to me, what I did was to take several of those wooden wedges that are used to shim doors or windows and drove them between the frame rails till they opened up to around 16-17mm and let it set for a day then drove them in even further and let it set again. After doing this several times and frequently checking the measurement I finally got them to 13mm at which point it worked fine. Check out the rail measurement on yours to see if it is actually 13mm, if smaller you might try what I did, if that bothers you then a visit to a gunsmith might be in order. I would not advise using a heat source to speed up this process, you might really mess up the original hardening of the metal.

Re: Re: new luger = painful question...
 

Hi George, one of the magazines is a repro and the hold open does not work with it (hold open works fine with the original mag though) - so I had been manually cocking the pistol after each magazine. I'll keep practicing either way as I'm certain technique has a lot to do with it.
regards

Re: Painful question
 

Hi Herb - great advice. I'll look into doing this. Thanks very much. :)
-Scott