[Big Norm]

Good question. I can not help you in which way it was but I believe that, for Lugers, it was one way during the Imperial Era and then the opposite way during the Nazi Era.It keeps banging around in my head the there were high rejection rates for the essentially hand made Lugers and during WW2, the Nazis tried to find ways to reduce costs by reducing the rejections. I am sorry for the rambling, but I remember reading about this in a book someplace and I am trying to tie the facts up in my brain.


The fact that the Kreighoff Lugers after the 1936-37 contract were mostly assembled for the commercial market. These Lugers were made up from left over and rejected parts from the original contract and rejection marks can be found on many of the later manufactured years. This suggests to me that logically the parts were proofmarked before the bluing but that the serial numbers were added after the bluing. It also suggests to me that my information came from Gibsons book "The Kreighoff Luger".


During the Imperial Era, you will find many military Luger with less than four proof marks (some with only two) and some Lugers with five proof marks. The five proofs would indicate that the gun was rejected but the fault was corrected and the gun retested and passed. But the serial numbers will still be within the military range of manufactured guns. These Lugers would be the guns that were rejected by the military but sold to military personal for their personal sidearm. This suggests to me that the proofmarks and numbering occured before the bluing.

Big Norm