Mitchell Luger

[shadow]

Hello,

I recently bought a Mitchell luger. I wanted a luger for at least 25 years but have never been a position to buy one. When I came across this Mitchell at a local gun store it appealed to me for several reasons so I bought it. The gun looks brand new and the barrel looks excellent. It came with two clips, a stainless loading tool, a leather holster, a felt Mitchell bag, and the instruction manual. I paid $625. I live in New Jersey so I have to wait for my pistol permit to come in before I can actually take it home and shoot it. I have several boxes of Winchester and S&B ammo standing by for that day.

[shadow]

The other side

[shadow]

This is the last photo. I can't figure out how to send more than one photo at a time.

[Edward Tinker]

Hello Chris and welcome. At each posting you can post one photo. However, you can also Upload photo's, upper right corner, then you copy the URL and paste it into the thread, and can post up to 8 photos per posting.


Ed

[pipeman45]

Nice find. I haven't seen one priced that low around here!

[wdavid431]

A really nice pistol. I also have a Mitchell American Eagle, 1992. Although many do not care for the Mitchells, mine fires great and cleans up nice. I am very happy with it. What year is your Luger?
Fire your pistol and enjoy it. You have a nice Luger at a great price. It looks beautiful.

[Edward Tinker]

Warren, welcome to the forum! Lots of army, navy, air force and marines vets here, and even some retired ones! I was in 1980-2000.


Ed

[shadow]

It is a 1993, and yes I do plan on shooting it.

I have never owned a stainless gun before, are there any special considerations when cleaning and polishing it?

[Steve Richards]

Welcome to the forum!

I have two of the stainless guns. For cleaning, I use Hoppe's on a Boresnake for the bore and Tetra cleaning spray and a toothbrush for everything else. Just be careful when removing the left grip! Take the right grip of first and after removing the left screw, push the bottom of the left grip out just enough to clear the bottom of the frame and slide the grip down. If you try to just lift it out you will break the top rear projection of the grip.

Other than that, the stainless guns do not seam to take any special care.

Steve

[Lugerdoc]

In my opinion, it is a good idea to use a stainless lub (grease) on the frame and receiver rails to prevent galling. TH

[shadow]

My pistol permits finally came in after 14 weeks so I picked up my Mitchell luger and my Ruger Super Blackhawk 44 Mag. and went to the range. Here are several pictures of my new toys. The luger grouped well but had extractor and ejecting issues that I will discuss in another post. The super Blackhawk also grouped well but it was so loud that all of the other shooters in the small indoor range immediately came over to see what I was shooting after the first shot. Out of courtesy for the other shooters I only shot 5 more rounds. Overall I am very happy with both of my new toys and I just need to sort out a couple of issues with the luger.

[shadow]

I shot my new(to me) Mitchell luger for the first time today and it started having issues on the third shot. I was not able to shoot more than four shots without a jam. I was shooting S&B 115&124gr, and Wal-Mart Winchester. The most frequent jam was a failure to extract the case from the chamber. The action would then attempt to feed the next round into a camber that was still occupied by the previous shell case. The next most frequent type of jam was the spent case staying attached to the breech block without ejecting and blocking the next round from feeding. This second failure mode started to happen after about forty rounds and after a couple of these I noticed that the action felt like it was full of crud so I stopped shooting at about 50 rounds. When I took the gun apart after 50 rounds it was filthy inside so I hope the second failure mode was attributed to dirt.

I gave the gun a good scrub and will try again. After cleaning the breech block I noticed that the bottom face appears to be pushed up slightly as if it struck a miss-fed case. I am not sure if this is normal, but I doubt it.

I could not get the extractor out because I donâ??t have a small enough punch to remove the pin. I will make a smaller punch later this week, and will remove the extractor to clean under it.

I have attached some photos of the breech block, and of the jams. The jams were taken with my camera phone and are not good quality.

Any help is greatly appreciated.






Jam mode # 1




Jam mode # 2

[Aaron]

Your experience with the Mitchell Luger is about the same as I had when I owned one. I also had the opportunity to fire two more, and none of them would function satisfactorily. I have noticed that the word seems to be getting around, and have seen them changing hands for as little as $400.

[John Sabato]

These guns may not have the fit and finish of their ancestors, but they are 100 precent Lugers by design... Some patient examiniation for burrs, and tight fitting parts that move when the gun is fired, followed by very careful polishing and appropriate lubrication will result in a very fine shooter...

It appears that the face of your breechblock, extractor, and ejector need some attention for smoothe operation...

One of our moderators, Steve Richards, owns several, and gets reliable functioning from them. Spend some time searching and reading the forum's archives on malfunctions and I am sure you can diagnose and mitigate your "new" Luger's problems... Some of these guns just need to be "shot in"...

[unspellable]

My Mitchell came right out of the box and has never missed a beat.

[Steve Richards]

My 9mm does indeed function fine with the S&B 155gr. I have tried other brands and had mixed results. Follow John's advice and look for burs and such and keep it lubed well (without overdoing it) and give it another try. Also try a new MecGar magazine since yours has the original style magazine.

Good luck.

Steve Richards

[shadow]

I did follow Johnâ??s advice and did find some burrs that were causing the extractor to stay up. I noticed if the action was closed and I pushed down on the back of the extractor, behind the pivot pin, then let go, the front of the extractor would stay up until I pushed it back down. Upon further investigation I found several things were causing this. First I found a metal chip in the extractor recess on the thread line where the barrel mates with the receiver. I removed the chip with a brass flat head screwdriver and the extractor moved more freely but it was still scraping somewhere when the action was closed.

I took a black sharpie marker and coated the extractor with black ink, closed the action and rocked the extractor about a dozen times to cause scrape marks in the black ink. Then I took a dremel with a small polishing pad and no compound and polished the high spots that were scraping. After some time of slowly polishing and rechecking, the extractor no longer binds or scrapes. I did not appear to remove any metal from the extractor but only needed to soften a couple of edges on the side of the extractor. I did not go near the part of the extractor that contacts the shell case.

After this I thoroughly cleaned the gun and oiled it and reassembled it. I put 5 snap caps in the magazine and cycled the action as fast as I could by hand by pulling back quickly and letting the toggles snap out of my fingers as my hand continued backwards. The action ejected and fed the snap caps flawlessly. I did this for at least 50 rounds then stopped when my fingers were too sore to continue cycling the action quickly by hand. This seems promising but I still wonâ??t know if it solved the problem until I get a chance to actually shoot the gun again.

If this does not solve the problem I will focus on the ding on the bottom of the breechblock face. No�«l and Steve could you please examine the breechblock face on your Mitchell Lugers to see if they appear to have the same ding on the bottom as mine does. If possible could you post photos of the breechblock face and bottom?

Sorry for the long post.
Thanks again for the great advice and support.

Chris

[Rod WMG]

Sounds as if you're almost there on solving your problem. Good luck and let us know the final outcome.

[shadow]

I put 200 rounds through the luger this afternoon and the extractor only failed to extract the case about five times total, and these all occurred after the gun was hot. This includes two where the case was pulled halfway out of the chamber before the extractor let go, which is a new symptom. This is a great improvement over the once every two to five shots that it did before. I noticed that when the gun was hot I was able to make the extractor hang up again so I polished the extractor some more and am thinking about getting a new extractor spring.

Now that the extractor problem is nearly solved I was able to shoot it enough to get a feel for the gun. The gun did jam once every magazine or two but myself and another shooter who came over to see the luger were having so much fun shooting it that I did not document the types of jam. From what I remember there were two. The first was the front of the bullet hitting the top rim of the chamber opening and stopping. The second was the spent brass staying attached to the breech block and blocking the next round from feeding properly. Every fifty rounds or so I needed to brush a lot of copper shavings out of the action.

I was able to get the action to cycle more reliably by holding the gun firmly with both hands. I used this technique for the last fifty rounds and only had about four jams. I know you shouldnâ??t limp wrist a luger but isnâ??t the need to hold it firmly with two hands excessive?

I plan to buy the metgar magazine and to polish the feeding ramps to see it helps. I am also still trying to find out if the bottom face if my breechblock is dinged or if it is normally that way.

The other shooter was so impressed with the feel and accuracy of the gun that he now plans to buy a luger. His exact words were that â??he never had a gun feel so good when you shot itâ?�. I sent him to this site.

[Ponyman]

You said "spent brass staying attached to the breech block and blocking the next round from feeding properly." Could that be due to underpowered loads, which would not drive the linkage to full travel thus not activating the ejector?