My first Luger!!

[Dwight Gruber]

Don,

OK, you can do -all- my photomicrographty for me!!

It looks like the second strike has obliterated the right edge of the first strike--strikes--as well as the strike bottom, thus eliminating the possibility of determining the original strike axis. If you put a straightedge on the left edge of the original strike you will see that the barrel edge and receiver edge do not share the same angle.

Now, having gone through this exercise, it is worth remembering that it is very easy to over-analyse witness marks, as we have just done. A perfect witness mark--single strike, single-instrument, undisturbed, as I keep saying no doubt to everyone's continued ennui--may be primary evidence that a barrel is original to the Luger.

No other configuration or description of witness mark tells us anything whatever. No conclusion can be drawn from a witness mark which isn't perfect, not even the possibility of a gun's rebarrel.

The exercise is fun but ultimately fruitless, something which I must remind myself every so often as I focus closer and closer on any given mark.

--Dwight