Durability of Post War Mauser Luger

[Dwight Gruber]

Originally posted by Ponyman
Is there any way to find out the straw condition of the parts reported as broken?

Your assessment of the hardness situation is a good one. I'm sure at this point you'd have to do a new survey particularly for the "straw condition" information.

And I'm not sure that it wouldn't be a red herring, in any case. I don't imagine that the remaining straw is any indication of the change of hardness of the part (if any); straw is a surface color effect which can fade even by long-term exposure to light.

I can report that one ejector which broke on a G-date I used to own was polished white, and only the tipbroke off--it was still functional. The still-strawed ejector which was on the S/42 I shoot broke behind the ejection tab, as did the no-straw-remaining replacement, in short order.

This gun currently has a blued ejector, which brings up another point. From 1937 on these parts were blued, so even though they may have tempered them to straw temperature, the straw itself was covered--probably polished off in order to take salt-blue.

--Dwight