Newly discovered Luger from an old collection, valuable?

[ithacaartist]

Originally Posted by milburn

Since this pistol still has the rust blue finish, could you give the gentleman the benefit of the doubt and ask to see the pistol disassembled and check to see whether or not the inside is blued or in the white?

I know the side plate looks really buffed, and the proofs are stamped very lightly, but the view of the back strap has the edges still very, very sharp. And they didn't blue the magazine.

Barry, the whiteness of the inside metal would only reveal that it's either been rust blued--or possibly cleaned up, which I think would be an exception. If a pistol is stripped clean and reblued by the rust method, it would still be in the white because the second finish would be applied by the same technique, wiping the chemical solution on; it make no sense to treat the inside surfaces, particularly the areas that move against one another in the upper. A blued finish is actually a form of manipulated and controlled corrosion--literally, rust. It is abrasive to the steel when rubbed around on it, and NOT finishing the insides avoids some premature or excessive wear.

The planes and angles of a Luger are used to help determine whether the surface has been buffed for a refinish, as do the conditions of the stampings. In an unmolested stamping, one can detect a tiny rim around the perimeter of each figure. This is because when the steel is struck with a die, the material that once occupied the actual volume taken up by the impression left mUst go somewhere in order for this to happen. It is pushed away, crowding excess material to be squished out and up, around the figure the die presents. This distortion is most often accompanied by a "halo", which is a thinning of the dark finish in accord with this profound, though small, metallurgical change. The molecules that make up the grain are physically shifted and re-arranged, and they actually become harder (work hardened) than the original base material. The pic of the right front of the bbl. extn. shows that these edges have been worked down dead flat, flush with the surrounding surface, by use of a sanding block. So, edges and halos gone. If the edges remain and their color and tone match the surrounding surface, a gun would be suspected of having been re-blued without physical action taken to the surface beforehand, as in one that had been chemically stripped.

The guns that have the reputation for nice, smooth surfaces, I think, are the early ones, the civilian commercial models, and maybe some Kreighoffs. Regular military Lugers show some tool marks from machining processes--the swirls from an end mill, slightly misaligned start and stop points, second passes, etc., particularly, it is said, toward the ends of the wars, under the hurried conditions of their construction. The surfaces on yours that have not been buffed have been sanded too nice and flat and smooth IMO to be original. the barrel has been smoothed/sanded to the extent that the ubiquitous 8.** dimension of the I.D between the lands has been almost removed.

Overall a nice job, if a refinish, with the exception of the wavy side plate. Wait to see if my pronouncements bear up under peer review, but I think I'm not too far off. Oh, almost forgot...My impression is that there was not much priority given to re-bluing of magazines, and so this observation would not be used in this equation.