</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">Originally posted by policeluger:
<strong>...and Ed I have always wondered if there where all these armouers out there running around replacing parts? Has anyone ever identified at least say a large tool/parts box that an armour would have? I really think too much has been places on "armourer's" than was documented. And how heavly was the gun used prior too needing a part replaced. While I seldom if ever shoot Lugers, and nothing from my collection/investment, there are many here that shoot thier Lugers, are thay replaceing parts as often as we are incountering "armour" replaced parts in the collecting field...how much was a Luger fired during even 4/5 year of war...long way around, I guess what I want too say is do you feel that the "armourer's replaced" is a way of hidding, or getting around a Luger that is not 100%. thanks</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva"> </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">Originally posted by Edward Tinker:
<strong>I have seen pictures of a tool kit, it appeared to have just about everything except for a frame and barrel! Seriously it contained a large amount of parts...So, I bet that many parts are from parted out guns, from the thousands of parts left over and hauled away after each war and from repro parts. Plus the armorer kits that would have been in many hundreds of units.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">Howard,
Check this link for the
Broken Parts Survey, it should answer some of your questions about parts breakage in modern use. It is useful to remember that these guns are 60-100 years old, at the far end of their use cycle, and may not accurately reflect conditions when the guns were new.
Armorer's replacement parts is a topic which has been a back-of-my-mind interest for a while. There doesn't seem to be a lot of common understanding of where replacement parts came from (who made them), field armorer operations, how often and what parts were replaced, etc. I've been asking after this topic for a while, anyone who can provide factual (documented) information has my thanks.
Regarding Armorer's Kit contents, Joachim G�¶rtz, in the February 1996 "Auto Mag", reported the army list of parts available to armorers for field repair, and noted that barrels and receivers were not included, that barrel and receiver repair was an armory-level function (no mention of the frame, so presumably that was at least available). (Although this was a WWII-era edict, I have observed that Weimar and Wehrmacht practices regarding the P-08 tend to follow those established by the Imperial German Army, so I am confident that this practice was current in WWI.)
S/42-marked WWII parts are accepted to be armorer replacements. I have an Erfurt-manufactured magazine with two inspector's stamps and no serial# which was represented to me as an armorer's replacement; grips with inspector stamps and no numbers are also reportedly armorer replacements. These at least make sense to me.
But I also think that ignorance (or lack of information--to say it nicely) and wishful thinking cause owners to invoke this to justify a non-matching gun.
The logic would be, I guess, that field armorer work (or armory depot work) is at least "authentic", whereas parts replacement after the gun passed from Army (or Police) jurisdiction simply reduces a Luger's condition. I must admit to some agreement with this.
--Dwight