First luger - won't work - need help!

[esbshaw]

I am a new member on the LugerForum, and also a new luger owner. It is a totally refinished 1921 piece (new barrel, new grips, re-blued, re-strawed, etc.) that appears to have one or more problems. I bought it as a consignment piece in a gunshop, so the gunshop owner had never fired it & didn't know a whole lot of background on it. I paid $800. The refinish looks very nicely done, and all the numbers match, although I have no idea if they're all original or if some parts were re-numbered during the refurb.

The first thing that I noticed was that when I put a pencil down the barrel, pointed it towards the ceiling, and pulled the trigger, the pencil did not jump out of the barrel. In fact it only moves about 1/4 of an inch.

I took the pistol out the other day, loaded it, pulled the trigger. Nothing. No audible "click"; nothing. I pulled the trigger about ten times, and it fired on the tenth pull. The empty case ejected fine but the pistol "jammed" and didn't feed the next round. The recovered case had a very nice and acceptable primer strike. After clearing the jam and chambering a fresh round, I again had to pull the trigger about a dozen times before the piece would fire. At this point I gave up and came home.

I disassembled the pistol, thinking that maybe it had not been assembled correctly, or a very obvious defect or broken part would appear. Everything looked undamaged and assembled correctly. However, I did notice a couple of troubling things. First, I have watched the LugerForum youtube videos. They indicate that when disassembling, the large cross-pin at the rear of the toggle should pretty much just fall out freely, and slip right back in when assembling. My cross-pin (correctly numbered, by the way) was tight and had to be tapped out. When assembling, it would go through the left side of the barrel extention and the toggle quite easily, bit would "hang up" and not go through the right side of the extention unless I wiggled the extention while tapping the pin. Second, the breechblock does not slide easily in and out of the extention. It is stiff and tight and hard to get back in when reassembling.

Unfortunately, I think that these two things (and probably other clues that I'm missing) mean that the barrel extention was been "tweeked" and the rails are not parrallel to each other any more, right? And that this condition is somehow contributing to the lack of proper trigger function?

Is there any hope for this piece? I hate to give up on it, but I can't sink unlimited amounts of money into this project. I paid $800 for it, and I thought while although not a screaming bargain was at least a halfway decent price for a very nicely refurbed shooter that was somewhat uncommon (1921 date with the dove-dove-buzzard marks on the right side) and that had a new barrel and perfect bore. At this point I don't think that it is within the scope of my expertise to get it running right. Can anyone suggest a competent 'smith that might be able to do something with this beast? What would one expect to pay for someone to straighten the frame, assuming that's actually the problem. Does Tom, who posts here as LugerDoc, accept this kind of work from fellow board members? Thanks in advance for any and all advice and suggestions.