Just from an engineering standpoint Ed,
I have two years of manufacturing engineering experience in metal fabrication and many years as a student of engineering - just one of the things that attracts me to Luger pistols.
Back then, just as today, technology does not stagnate. Manufacturing techniques, including improvements in alloys and the methodologyies for heat treatment of steel contimue to evolve.
While I don't have a published reference I can point to for you anymore, (sold most of my Luger references too many years ago to count), I have read numerous books on Lugers, and especially gunsmithing articles, and I have certainly gabbed with enough gunsmiths to have formed a consensus that WW2 produced steel frames were made of better steel...It stands to reason that improvements in the production of machine steel were made between the time of the WW1 era and the mid 30's when Germany began its move to take over Europe.
I know that use and age has a little to do with it, but those examples that I have seen from the first two decades of last century do show some battering on the toggle ramps and I can say that I have not seen an example of this "mushing" of these ramps on pistols manufactured in the 1030's and later...
Even our own HÃ?Â¥kan Spuhr has posted many times that the durability of the Mauser frame is unmatched in his experience in building custom Lugers...
-regards, John
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