To all,
The photos have just arrived and I know you are all anxious will post them all for your viewing pleasure.
This is a 1921 DWM Luger that has been cleverly modified by a skilled gunsmith to shoot .45 ACP. I can assure you that it did not leave the DWM factory that way.
Some of you may remember that a couple of years ago, Cpt. Monty Mendenhall (I hope I spelled his name correctly), posted photos of a gun similar to this one. That particular conversion was much more crude than this one and I recommended that it NOT be test fired...
A major difference in this gun is that the trigger guard has been stretched and shaped to look like the original .45 test guns of 1906-1907.
The grip frame has the standard P.08 profile and not the profile of the original .45 Lugers or the replica guns made by Mike Krause.
The magazine well has been enlarged by metal removal to accept a .45 caliber sized magazine body.
The magazine appears to have been made by modifying a standard M1911 Colt magazine. All in all, this conversion's quality is much better than the ones previously seen that were not made by Martz... however, because of the amount of metal that had to be removed from the frame and upper receiver in order to get a .45 ACP round to fit and function, I am unsure about the strength of the conversion, and can't say I would recommend test firing this gun in your hand...at least until it had been test fired in a ransom type rest and then examined for potential damage.
I would absolutely NOT recommend the firing of HOT loads in this gun.
I'll bet it would be fun to put a couple boxes through this one!
Thanks to Petesguns for sharing the photos...
I don't know what you paid for this gun, but it is pretty unique even if it is a modification of a standard frame Luger, and not an original. Outside of the Martz conversions, I haven't seen many that looked this good.
Here are the first 10 photos: