[Ron Wood]

Big Norm,

Walter's statement "when the Parabellums were supplied, the marks on the Russian and Bulgarian guns would have been identical" is not accurate...only the frame safety markings were identical. There is not a common Russian/Bulgarian extractor. The Russian and Bulgarian extractors were always different. The 1906 and 1908 Bulgarian Luger extractors were marked with the same marking as on Andy's Luger. There was only the 1906 Russian model with the extractor marked as your specimens and there were no post-1920 Bulgarian Lugers. It is possible that prior to 1920, the Russian and Bulgarian word for "fire" (phonetically "ah-go-in") was the same and therefore the characters are the same. I believe that the Bulgarian extractor translates as "full" and perhaps the marking on the Russian extractor is some other word (it has been suggested to me that it translates as "captured") and therefore would be spelled differently although written in the same pre-1920 Cyrillic alphabet. I hope that someone familiar with both languages can translate the respective extractor markings...I have always wondered exactly what they mean.

Your Siamese artillery is a rare find. I have never seen one. As I recall, the short barreled Siamese police had Siamese characters on the rear of the frame. Is that true for the Artillery model as well and are there any other distictive markings?