[ithacaartist]

I have a couple.

The overtly stainless one is branded OFM Corp., no chamber date, and only the eagle from the center of the Great Seal stamped there. 9 mm P.08. When it arrived, it was fairly easy to address the upset material above the breech that had probably been pushed up by the breech block on return to battery. The ramps of the toggle ears were spalled a bit from toggle knob strikes, so I filed the protruding material inside and outside of the upper there. Luckily, raw stainless is easy to restore the polish or grain.

The extractor this one sports has no side"ears," but an original might fit if it were modified. The ejector on this one had been ground too thin at the factory, and it was bent near the tip. In this case, an original I scored from Lugerdoc fit and works fine, although it's not quite as wide as the former stainless part.

Galling is caused by slamming materials together that are too similar, in alloy or hardness. The phenomenon occurs when molecules on each surface actually weld themselves together via the violent impact. Keep working at it, and big gobs of material will be created by the stainless as it is crammed against itself. As many can attest, it's what happens with nuts and bolts are assembled without clean enough threads- if one doesn't retreat immediately, the pair will be locked together fairly permanently. If the bolt can be muscled off thereafter without snapping it, one can see that the threads have been torn off and mushed together.

There are lubes specifically for this type of situation, stainless on stainless, so keeping it from getting started at all is the best bet for minimizing galling. It won't necessarily prevent spalling, upsetting, or peening because they're more of a hardness issute...but there ya go.

The other is stainless, too, but Cerokoted black. I guess we call it the 1900/2000 because it's one of the 100 year commemorative series branded Aimco, and has both dates that accompany the eagle stamped above the chamber. I think it may be the last batch of Lugers to have been made in Houston. I'm surprised that parts for, and info about guns made so relatively recently so often exceed the mysteries provided by the original Parabellum/P.08. I've run a couple of mags of .30 Luger through it, and it cycles OK, but the mag that came with it is a replacement, I think, because it took a strip of masking tape applied to the spine and one side to get it to work. I tried one of the stainless, flat-sided, larger style mags, one with the eagles molded into the mag bottom. It sorta worked, but since it's basically the only strictly collectible pistol I own, I haven't shot it since.