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Vlim · 09-04-2008, 08:40 AM

I guess that's ok when they pay the craftsmen the money they would have paid 100 years ago

What the Germans did 100 years ago had little to do with 'mastercraftsmanship'. They were catching up on the US way of doing things and combined greatly improved automated production methods with excellent quality control which enabled not-too-schooled workers to produce good quality products. They invented the industrial norm which laid the basis of the modern day ISO quality norms and they practiced making sewing machines.

So I personally wouldn't want to call the luger a piece of 'mastercraftsmanship'. It's an excellent but expensive bit of engineering which was viable because labour was cheap, production methods and quality control were good and the largest customer was a bribable military organization. Even these factors could not hide the fact that the luger was too expensive to produce, mainly because of a number of production steps that bordered on insanity if anything else.

The post war Mauser engineers took lots of steps trying to remove the insanity from the design and clean it up, just like the Swiss had already done in 1929, all trying to reduce production costs. So from an engineering point of view, the Mauser Parabellum was a better product than any pre-war luger.

Did Mauser make mistakes? Certainly. Choosing the optics of the Swiss design was not a good idea, neither was the fact that the Swiss M1929 and the derived Mauser Parabellum design were designed around the 7,65 para round and not the 9mm one.

I guess it's human nature to want to believe in a legend one way or the other but the real story is not so glamorous or romantic. But I find it too easy to say that it's bad or void of crafsmanship while the basic concept is largely better than the old one ever was.

Let's just respect it as a variation in a long line of the Luger manufacturing tradition.

09-04-2008, 08:40 AM	#9
Vlim Moderator Lifetime LugerForum Patron Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Europe Posts: 5,053 Thanks: 1,036 Thanked 3,990 Times in 1,205 Posts	I guess that's ok when they pay the craftsmen the money they would have paid 100 years ago What the Germans did 100 years ago had little to do with 'mastercraftsmanship'. They were catching up on the US way of doing things and combined greatly improved automated production methods with excellent quality control which enabled not-too-schooled workers to produce good quality products. They invented the industrial norm which laid the basis of the modern day ISO quality norms and they practiced making sewing machines. So I personally wouldn't want to call the luger a piece of 'mastercraftsmanship'. It's an excellent but expensive bit of engineering which was viable because labour was cheap, production methods and quality control were good and the largest customer was a bribable military organization. Even these factors could not hide the fact that the luger was too expensive to produce, mainly because of a number of production steps that bordered on insanity if anything else. The post war Mauser engineers took lots of steps trying to remove the insanity from the design and clean it up, just like the Swiss had already done in 1929, all trying to reduce production costs. So from an engineering point of view, the Mauser Parabellum was a better product than any pre-war luger. Did Mauser make mistakes? Certainly. Choosing the optics of the Swiss design was not a good idea, neither was the fact that the Swiss M1929 and the derived Mauser Parabellum design were designed around the 7,65 para round and not the 9mm one. I guess it's human nature to want to believe in a legend one way or the other but the real story is not so glamorous or romantic. But I find it too easy to say that it's bad or void of crafsmanship while the basic concept is largely better than the old one ever was. Let's just respect it as a variation in a long line of the Luger manufacturing tradition.