locking bolt/take down lever hard to operate

[stretchman25]

Several months ago I purchased my first P-08. It is a “mix master special” or in more appropriate terms is a gun that was pieced together from various parts. When I disassemble it, I have to use a hard wood dowel to move the locking bolt/ disassembly lever to the downward position. Watching videos of field stripping a P-08 show that just finger pressure is enough to move the locking bolt downward and thus allow removal of the side plate. Are there any adjustments that can be made in order to make moving the locking bolt downward easier?

[Mac Cat]

That is a pretty common feature of many semi-auto pistols, not just the Luger.
Sometimes you can just work them to loosen up, using oil.

You may also want to remove the small tension spring and see if the lever is still stiff.
If it is, it may need some filing to fit properly.
Or, you can buy another one pretty easily and see if a different one fits better.
They are not completely interchangeable parts - some need hand fitting.

The springs are fairly easy to remove and replace.
Some lugers don't even have one, but that wouldn't be smart for a pistol you are going to shoot.

Glad you chose to use a wooden stick and not a pair of piers !

[Ron Wood]

This may be a dumb question, and I apologize if it is, but are you retracting the receiver a bit to take the pressure off of the locking bolt?
Ron

[velodog455~]

You can easily check Ron's question by simply locking the toggle back, which takes the pressure off the locking block, and seeing if the rotating effort changes.

I've encountered this problem before. Here's how I fixed mine. Might or might work for you as well, I dunno.

With the pistol fully assembled, look carefully to see if the sideplate extension under the locking bolt is fully seated down on the frame. If so, and the sideplate and the locking bolt have different numbers then it is possible that the portion of the sideplate that the locking bolt rides over is a hair too thick. Or, it could be the locking bolt handle that is too thick.

Either way, you can carefully file a couple of thousandths off either that top part of the sideplate or from the underside of the locking bolt. Touch up with cold blue. It's often difficult to fit parts properly without sacrificing a bit of finish.

Also, with the sideplate, barrel, & barrel extension removed does the locking bolt then rotate easily in the frame? That is probably a good clue that you have an easily fixable tolerance stacking issue as noted above caused by mis-matched parts.

It COULD be the locking bolt spring is out of spec but I suspect otherwise, especially if the locking bolt rotates easily with the top half of the pistol off the frame.
-Bob

[Eugen]

OP, my shooter, a franken luger, had a similar problem when I acquired it about 8 years ago. I worked on it and eventually got it to behave better. I wish I could recall what I did exactly, but I did do some light filing/polishing particularly on the side plate. I think.

One of the gifts of owning a mixed parts Luger is that you get the joy of learning how to fit missmatching parts and then you get to brag about your gunsmithing skills. I am a level three Bubba

Keep us posted on your journey.