Pistol barrel rifling
 

I have a DWM commercial #6714 with the original numbered barrel which has no rifling, at least none visible to the eye. Is this normal for Lugers?

It may be worn but if the balance of the pistol is in decent shape, then more likely the gun has been fired extensively with lead bullets, which have gummed up the barrel. A good lead removal product might fix this up.

What he said. I have seen this occur many time, when shooting the incorrect lead bullet, or too much velocity for the hardness of the lead.

I have been using the Outers Foul Out Electronic System for years with excellent results for both copper and lead, if you follow the directions.

All copper Chore Boy pads - not copper plated - work great for removing leading from barrels. Just wrap some copper strands around a worn out bore brush and start cleaning. This method is best used dry and won't hurt the bore because copper is much softer than steel.

Charlie

I will throw this out here for S&G...and flame if you like...

One of my Colt Gold Cup 45's had lead fouling when I bought it [used]...Not a lot; just a little...I asked an old shooter how to get it out...he said to just shoot a FMJ slug through it...It sounded like a fairly drastic remedy, but since I shoot FMJ's anyway, I tried it...he was right...It cleaned the lead residue out... :eek:

Now, I'm not recommending it for this particular case...or for any case, for that matter...Just passing along an old pistol shooters ramblings...YMMV...

I've done this and it works as long as there is not too much lead fouling in the barrel, in which case, you will have an overpressured round. Not ideal in a Luger.

A friend of mine blew up an M16 by extensively firing lead .22 rimfire through it full auto with a conversion unit then swapping back to .223 without scrubbing out the barrel. After I saw that, I built a dedicated .22 rimfire upper for my M16 and use that, and only that, with .22 rimfire.

HAs it yet been determined if the bore is either A. smooth and oversized or B. Full of lead and undersized?
dju

Word on the street is that you just have to shoot some .223 to get the fouling out, so thats good info. I shoot quite a bit of .22 through my Bushmaster, so I will definitely be cleaning it after each session. :thumbup:

And flesh is much softer than bronze, which doesn't stop the former from wearing the latter:
http://forum.lugerforum.com/picture....pictureid=1752

This pic doesn't help, Michael. the flesh /fabric wear has taken off the more powdery green sulfate patina to reveal the harder, brown patina. One is not looking at raw bronze in this photo.

I guess the point is that where there's contact, there's wear. The devil is in the proportions of wear shared by the two rubbing elements, the number of repetitions per unit time, both of which would determine how long it would take for significant wear to Proportions are based on hardness, but difficult to get a handle on in cases such as the Grand Canyon, or rubbing a penny on the carpet about half a million times to polish it. Bronze still trumps flesh, overall in the proportions, but I'll bet Victor's nub is actually worn down from its original, but we'd need a "before" shot to confirm this. But just think of how many, um, pieces of flesh have rubbed on this spot; or how much time it would have taken for one to do it!

So, as we've observed recently, please use a bore guide for any rod during scrubbing, at least!

Ben Franklin is supposed to have said that the shiniest key is the one that is used the most...

Well, remember that my friend was shooting full auto with lead bullets at about 1,200 RPM. In a 14.5" barrel this leads up very quickly. Shooting semiauto should present a much lesser risk.

In any event, I went to a 7.5" barrel "Kitty Kat" upper, removed and plugged the gas tube and polished the entire insides. I also try to shoot only CCI minimags, which are plated, in the upper. With all these tweeks the upper runs 99% with a Ciener F/A kit. A blast to shoot all day very cheaply!!

Back to the original topic:
I found this on you tube:
http://youtu.be/xaY2-Gff6qY
about movie prop guns having threads added to the muzzle of the barrel in order to produce more pressure for the cycling action to work. Wouldn't you know it that this Luger precisely has this feature? I asked about it before in the new collectors forum and Vlim thought likewise about it being a movie prop. I thought that it was a silencer (or suppressor) hook up.

Maybe this is why the rifling is kaput.