[JonS/42]

I understand your apprehension-in shooting mine, over time, I (or John) have had to replace the take-down lever's L-shaped spring, and the toggle hold-open lever has had the original component massaged, and finally replaced.

While hardly an expert, in terms of durability for shooting purposes, I place Lugers in three categories:

1. Too delicate (and valuable) to be shot, and presumably with significantly limited parts availability: Flat extractor/leaf recoil spring Lugers;
2. Shootable, but probably not too heavily (and only after a qualified gunsmith's review), due to earlier metallurgy: Pre-Mauser production Lugers
3. Most shootable, (after a qualified gunsmith's review): Mauser and post-Mauser production pieces, due to increased metallurgical qualities providing increased durability.

Overall, I personally consider Lugers as a genre to be exceptionally shootable, albeit with pretty minuscule sights. Basically, they're also exceptionally durable. While they have a reputation for being finicky in the field, I suspect that this is primarily due to two factors:
1. Inappropriate ammunition/magazines/springing (commonly encountered issues seem to center around when using contemporary commercial ammunition);
2. A historically-derived reputation of the susceptibility of the exposed sear mechanism on the left side of the pistol being jammed by foreign material in combat use.

Regarding #1, Lugers, like 1911s, tend to operate on the edge of mechanical acceptability-there's not a huge tolerance for error in their mechanical operations. Ammunition, recoil springs, and magazine springs need to be evaluated and tuned, especially if there's deviations from the German military specification cartridges-and that covers powders, characteristics, and bullet shape/weight/composition. John Martz specifically has recommended to me (and others) that Winchester ammunition be used-I believe that his concern was primarily with the quality and characteristics inherent to Winchester's primers that made them a preferential choice. I've recently successfully used Federal's new aluminum-cased 115gr Champion ball (sold in Walmart), but conversely had significant issues with Federal Eagle 147 gr ball (good ammunition, but the the Luger and Eagle 147gr bullets were just not a happy/compatible match).

Regarding #2, I'm strongly of a mind that the overly-protective German issue holsters were a huge causal factor, in that they were so slow and cumbersome to draw the pistol from (Actions required: 1: Unbuckle flap strap; 2: Open flap; 3: Yank down on lower suspension strap to raise pistol to a graspable position in the holster; and (finally) 4: Draw holster; 5: Off-Safe; 6: Actually fire...This process was so slow and convoluted (especially unbuckling the flap strap), that if combat usage was actually anticipated, there are ample period combat photographs demonstrating that soldiers removed the pistol from the holster in advance, and simply carried it stuffed behind their sturdy leather duty belts-rendering it accessible, but with the sear mechanism highly exposed, especially if the soldier had to low-crawl on the battlefield, where the exposed pistol acted as an earth-scraper...While undeniably well-made and highly protective, the German Luger and P.38 holsters were arguably some of the most tactically inaccessible/useless holsters fielded, in my opinion.

Best, Jon