Believe It Or Not... Range Report

[Doubs]

I have a mismatched Mauser-made Luger that my father and I bought in the 1950's. It didn't work well with the 4 inch barrel it came with so Pop had an eight inch barrel installed. It has never worked reliably so today I attempted to find a combination of parts that would work with the eight inch tube/slide.

I took the eight inch Mauser, an East German rework Mauser (also a mismatch) with four inch barrel and the frame of a post-WW1 DWM that included the side plate. Two new Mec-Gar mags also went along. My loads included 124 grain ball cartridges loaded with 6.0 grains of Unique and 8.0 grains of Blue Dot. OAL of those cartridges was 1.150" as stipulated by the Hornady manual. I also took some old loads of Speer 100 Grain and Hornady 115 grain HP's charged with 8.5 grains of AA #7. The 100 grain HP's were loaded to an OAL of 1.065" while the 115 grain loads were 1.125". I had loaded them for my father in August of 1988.

Not only did every combination of parts that I tried using the eight inch barrel and 124 grain bullets fail to function correctly, but the East German rework with the four inch barrel also jammed using the Unique and Blue Dot loads. It was enough to make a grown man mumble to himself!

Finally, I was out of Unique and Blue Dot loads so I turned to the hollowpoint loads. A magazine of five rounds of 115 grain HP's in the East German rework and the first four fed beautifully. It jammed on the final round but looks promising. Then I loaded seven rounds of the 100 grain HP's and the darned pistol gobbled them up as though they were candy! Fourteen year-old loads and they worked the Luger like a champ!

I know that seven rounds don't make a reliable gun but it's a beginning and for a gun that isn't supposed to feed HP's, this one seems to like them. I'll load more later and report again when I test them.