Luger Timeline - Updated

[sheepherder]

Has anyone seen a timeline for the various manufacturers of the Luger??? I'm looking for a chart showing beginning & ending of production in a horizontal format...Time/year-date shown at bottom, with manufacturers shown at side...And a timeline showing where manufacturers overlapped or didn't overlap...

I'm not all that versed in Luger chronology and my LGS was interested so he could know what is passing through his store...

There seems to be more people in my area buying Lugers online and having them shipped in...

[cirelaw]

H&L Ebooks has a downloadable vesion for aroung ten dollars... Its the only source I know of! ~~~Eric http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR9XcZ8yjDk

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by cirelaw

H&L Ebooks has a downloadable vesion for aroung ten dollars... Its the only source I know of! ~~~Eric http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR9XcZ8yjDk

I can't access YouTube, but why would a video have a static chart??? Is that Gerard's E-Books???

[ithacaartist]

Yes, it's Gerard's "Luger Producers" But I don't remember such a chart. A couple of charts show up in the montage about the eBook on YouTube; the second one is about proof marks, first one is too small and fuzzy to decipher. Better buy the eBook!

I vaguely recall something like that, Rich, one of those horizontally long charts with bars for the different mfgrs, applied to a timeline. I think it was in the background in a pic, probably on this forum, of a museum/huge collection setting. Maybe someone remembers more.

[cirelaw]

I got a picture of the index~~Eric

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by ithacaartist

I vaguely recall something like that, Rich, one of those horizontally long charts with bars for the different mfgrs, applied to a timeline. I think it was in the background in a pic, probably on this forum, of a museum/huge collection setting.

That must be where I got the mental picture from...One of Gerard's E-Book previews, or maybe a thread by Vlim on the visit to the factory, or something...

I just downloaded Gerard's Nambu E-Book, have to buy the password now...14MB; took a couple hours...

[Edward Tinker]

jeez, you should be able to do it off the top of your head?

not counting Swiss or navy, because I am barely knowledgeable on them....

tell your gun store to buy some books

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by Edward Tinker

jeez, you should be able to do it off the top of your head?

You're right. How hard can it be??? I'll draw up a timeline!

tell your gun store to buy some books

No, people who buy Lugers aren't interested in books. Magazines, maybe.

Edit: There!!! You were right - I do remember it!!!

[Dwight Gruber]

I have been working on this as a side project for a very long time. I'm posting a sample of it here, a very small part of a much more comprehensive document. I hope that it will be complete enough at some point to see the light of day.

--Dwight

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by Dwight Gruber

I have been working on this as a side project for a very long time. I'm posting a sample of it here, a very small part of a much more comprehensive document. I hope that it will be complete enough at some point to see the light of day.

--Dwight

Dwight - Very cool! Much larger and more intricate than I had expected.

I was going to put my two research assistants on this, but I'll pull them off and await your finished chart!

[cirelaw]

If you commited a homicide these two will bust you! They do once a week on cable, Eric

[lugersrkewl]

1897 all the way to Ernst Thalmann. technically research and development preceded the initial first swiss piece.

[Vlim]

The Spandau line only existed in Never-neverland.
Mauser restarted between 1970 and 1999.
Swiss made their final pistol in 1965.
Norinco in 1994.
Krieghoff in 2010.
Vickers stopped in the late 1920s.

[sheepherder]

Yes, my timeline is a little off. Chalk it up to poor memory, old age, and only a few books (which I fall asleep reading about a dozen pages in)...

My LGS got in a 1939 'S/42' with about 98% blue, all matching numbers, bright shiny bore, very little wear on the internals, paint still in safety, excellent grips, Mauser hump, nice unbuggered grip screws, all-in-all, a great collector piece. He has no idea what it is, or what it is worth.

And judging from my timeline, neither do I...

I was thinking of buying Gerard's Luger Production E-Book...But if Spandau's don't exist...

[Lugerdoc]

I believe that Dwight is including firms (Simson & Kreighoff) with reworking efforts before they had the machinery to build complete lugers. To trace the latter, just follow the machinery: DWM from 1898 until the end of WW1. Then reorganized as BKIW until about 1933 when their machinery went to Mauser thru 1942, when they switched over to P38 production and sent all of their spare PO8 parts to either KH or a Luftwaffe depot to make the KU lugers. Erfurt began production in late 1910 thru the end of WW1 (1918), and soon there after their machinery went to Simson to begin production in 1925, until nationalized by the Nazis (Jewish firm) in about 1933 and Kreighoff received their machinery to begin production in late 1935 thru the end of WW2 in small lots for the Luftwaffe, and continued to assemble their left over spare parts (DWM, Erfurt, Simson, etc) under allied control for a few years after the war. The third and final set of machinery was made by the Swiss in 1916 due to no longer being able to get luger from Germany during WW1 and redesigned it prior to 1929 to produce a simpler to manufacture M1929, made thru 1949. This is the machinery sold to Mauser to produce their postwar Parabellum starting in 1970, which then had to be updated in 1971 to make the PO8 style pistol. Vickers and Spandau were not true manufactures. They just assembled existing DWM or Erfurt parts with their own toggle links, after WW1. TH

[sheepherder]

Thank You, Tom!

I will modify my crude timeline to reflect all that. After dinner.

(I spent the day un-bubba-izing an 1891 Argentine Mauser and hopefully it will resemble a carbine when finished)...

I would like to include the Vickers & Spandau times as there are Lugers with those toggles. I have never seen [pics] of a BKIW Luger toggle - is there such a thing??? Or would the BKIW Lugers have DWM toggles???

I don't know the approx times of the Vickers/Spandau Luger parts...

[Dwight Gruber]

Tom,

Just to be clear, the timeline which Sheepherder posted is not mine. My (in retrospect, ambiguous) comment refers to my own project, which I have not made public except for the very small detail which I posted.

--Dwight

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by Dwight Gruber

Tom,

Just to be clear, the timeline which Sheepherder posted is not mine.

--Dwight

Quite correct. Mine is probably full of mistakes, as the books I am using [Datig, Jones, Walter] are all old.

I tried to update my 'timeline', but there are conflicts between books, forums, and Web sources.

Edit: My chart updated constantly...Last update at 10:28pm 14 Feb

Let me take a minute to explain my 'timeline' in post # 8 above...

I was hoping that someone had already listed such a chart...But in correcting my feeble effort, I realized that anything I do is not going to be accepted by the experts anyway, because if a Swiss Luger has a Swiss cross on it, I'm going to call it a Swiss Luger, even though it was made by DWM...Similarly, if it has a Spandau crown & stamp on the toggle, I'll call it a Spandau Luger...

So the years may not match with the established chronology of a certain manufacturers/factories production.

For my purposes, that hasty ID will do until I can inspect the pistol in question more thoroughly and if in doubt, ask someone whose opinion I respect...

I am depending primarily on John Walters' book "The Luger Book" (not to be confused with his other book, "The Luger Story") because it is the latest book I have. Any mistakes are mine in interpretation. I understand that the data in Datig's and Jone's books may be incomplete or inaccurate. Just accept my 'timeline' as a flight of fancy!

I look forward to Dwight's timeline!