I wonder why anyone would put "witness marks" on the barrel and receiver if they were already installed and lined up. What purpose would they then serve? Also, the theory that the barrels were installed and then finished does not quite explain the picture I have seen somewhere of an assembler with a rack of completed barrels with finished sight bases.
Another advantage of draw lines is that the chamber can be finished and the headspace will be correct, since the barrel will always line up in the right position. Any minor deviation will not be enough to create a headspace problem, whether the barrel is to be installed on a pistol or is to be set aside as a replacement barrel.
In addition, the fact that the draw lines on barrel and receiver do NOT always line up perfectly would show they were not made at the same time. If the purpose was simply to show the original barrel position, they would have been made with the same tool at the same time, with a single blow. That is obviously NOT the case, as a close look at several Lugers will show.
I stand by my statement on the reason for and use use of draw lines.
As to the order of work, Walter's description of the inspection and acceptance marks being put on after the gun was blued is certainly wrong. If that was done, those marks would show bright metal where the bluing was cut through. While I am sure others here have seen far more original finish Lugers than I have, I have never seen any inspection/acceptance mark that was cut THROUGH the bluing. In fact, they are usually partially buffed out by the final polishing prior to bluing. Those marks, like the numbers, were put on while the gun was in the white.
(Where the law allowed, proofing was almost always done "in the white" so that if a barrel failed proof, time had not been wasted on bluing it.)
Parts would have been gauged, inspected and marked with inspection marks (if required) as parts, in the white. They would not have been inspected after bluing or, again, the marks would cut through the blue, which they do not. Nor were they inspected by the assemblers since then every assembler would have had to have a full set of gauges, an unlikely situation.
Assembly numbers, likewise, were put on before bluing; they never show bright metal and always show signs of buffing and bluing.
Is it too much to ask that collectors have some knowledge of the way factories work? Or are we supposed to assume that the Luger was a heavenly gift, made by divine intervention rather than by the common production techniques of the day?
If anyone has a Luger in which the draw lines are more than a degree or so off, I would suggest checking the front sight for alignment. Either the barrel was not installed properly or the original barrel was taken off and then it or another barrel was installed improperly. This is not always easy to see just by sighting the gun, but a straight edge will tell the story.
Jim
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