How were they made?

Many of the parts were forged, and then machined by various methods in jigs and other tooling specially made just for repeatedly doing one operation.


For example, the barrels were forged, turned on a lathe, and bored... The front sight band was made by a broaching operation, similar to pushing cookie mix thru a form, or to drawing a shaped file over the metal. The threads were cut,as was the chambering and extractor cut and the front sight dovetail. The front of the barrel was turned to a smooth radius. Somewhere in here the barrel would be heat treated and tempered. Then the piece would be gaged as to its fit and so forth and proofed or rejected. (the order of the process was probably different that what I have offered here, but the basic steps would be similar)


Tooling of that period was basic, but not primitive. Along with milling machines, drills, and broaches, a common tool was the shaper. The shaper was used extensively in making the small slots that we find throughout the Luger and until the late 1800's was the only machine tool capable of producing a true flat plane surface and is basically a reciprocating ram that carried a cutting tool, back and forth over or through a work piece.


I believe someone wrote that there were over 700 machining operations per finished Luger.


Others can undoubtly add to (and correct) this brief attempt, but i hope it helps some...FGR