Borchardt-Luger Controversy

[Kyrie]

Hi Jerry!

[quote]Originally posted by Jerry Harris:
<strong>
(snippage)
I have looked at both many times, and am (and was) well aware that they each employ the depressed-center toggle lock, as did Maxim in the "Devil's Paintbrush" that inspired Borchardt.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes sir, I assume you were and if I seemed to imply otherwise I apologize.

[quote]Originally posted by Jerry Harris:
<strong>
Now, if you will look again at a cross-section of the Borchardt (for example in John Walter's "Luger Story," 2001 edition,p.28) it will be evident that the toggle-operating lever, roller and curved cam occupy a major portion of the rearward-bulging spring housing which Luger was striving to eliminate. So I think it is fair and reasonable to say that his idea for completely eliminating these parts and using the existing frame ramps to trip the toggle was a nontrivial, in fact vital, step in transforming the capable Borchardt into the inspired Parabellum, the timeless design that has attracted more than 400 appreciative members to this forum.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
While I quite agree with some of what you write here, I do have to cordially demure on at least one point. I agree that the change from the internal cam method of â??breaking the kneeâ?? of the toggle to the use of the inclined ramps on the frame are different methods. Iâ??m also in agreement that this change was a required one due to a preceding change (specifically the elimination rear mainspring and its housing). And I agree that the change was vital to getting a pistol that worked. And I quite agree on the attractiveness of the resulting pistol - else Iâ??d not be here :-)
OTOH, and the place where I cordially disagree is on whether the change was trivial. Purely IMO, it was a trivial change, and the change itself was necessitated by another change. In essence, it was not a change to improve the Borchardt, but a change required to make the â??Improved Borchardtâ?? work at all

[quote]Originally posted by Jerry Harris:
<strong>
(snippage)
But from the firearms engineering point of view, Luger did a superb job of turning a promising curiosity into a commercial and artistic masterpiece.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Here I regret to say I must mostly disagree. From a firearms engineering point of view, both the Borchardt and the Parabellum are sound, working designs. From an esthetic point of view, I regard both pistols as artistic masterpieces, but here we are getting into beauty and that always resides in the eye of the beholder :-) However, in any commercial sense I completely agree that the Parabellum is clearly the better pistol, as demonstrated by sales!

[quote]Originally posted by Jerry Harris:
<strong>
So I must join Doubs in respectfully disagreeing with you on what design issues were truly significant.

I also join the other members in thanking you for a wonderful historical post and stimulating follow-up comments.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Cordial disagreement is always welcome, and I truly appreciate your views. I especially want to thank you for your investment in time and effort in your very nicely crafted reply (as I get older I increasing appreciate the value of time!). And I thank you for your very kind words - you have warmed my heart, even in disagreement. Thatâ??s a rare ability my friend.

Warm regards,

Kyrie

[Kyrie]

Hi Wes!

[quote]Originally posted by wes:
<strong>If the toggle were stationary in a horizontal position and its only movement was vertical, the rebound of the toggle would be a major problem in design. However the motion is also in a horizontal direction, travelling in the reverse order of breakover whenever closing. There is no 'bounce'.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes sir, I quite agree; toggle bounce was simply a non-issue :-)

[quote]Originally posted by wes:
<strong> Borchardt knew this and Luger knew this. The concern came from the prospective contract/purchase clients who were not engineers.</strong><hr></blockquote>
But here I have to respectfully and cordially disagree. Hugo Borchardt had no concerned prospective contract/purchase clients and could not have been influenced by that which he had not. Just why Georg Luger retained the toggle lock is open to speculation. He may well have been influenced by marketing concerns, or he could have shared Borchardtâ??s concerns. In my opinion, it was the latter rather than the former - but other opinion are as valid as my own and I can respect your view on the issue without necessarily agreeing with it :-)

Warm regards,

Kyrie

[wterrell]

The pistol was not Borchardt's first rodeo. He had presented his design in the USA and was shown the door. He was also previously a sewing machine engineer which influenced his gun design. He incorporated the lock to satisfy conventional gun manufactures to whom he presented his pistol. He had no 'concerns'.

Gnat's hairs are rather small and tedious, aren't they?

[Heinz]

Kyrie, First I apologize if you thought my reference to imaginative reports applied to you. I believe you were accurately reporting what you read. However it has been my experience in historical research that many secondary reference materials that have been published can be widely imaginative. If there is an actual interview with Mr Luger and he stated he was having these problems, and it was reported reasonably currently with when it happened, then it is a very nice reference. [But then look at all the recent interviews with Osama Bin Ladin ;-)]

I was incorrect when I referred to the rear of the reciever as the breech. I understand how that would be confusing. The Toggle Knob cams on the leading rear edge of the reciever.

As to the spring holding the toggle and breech closed. Try and experiment. Decock the firing pin spring and remove the cannon from the frame. Turn the canon upside down and observe the slight fall in the toggle. Decock the firing in the assembled pistol and turn it upside down. My 1915 does not have the slight drop in the toggle under this condition, indicating to me the recoil spring continues to exert a slight force on the toggle train.

Again, please to do not take any of my comments as personally maligning you. I have faith that you are an accurate reporter of what you have read and experienced.

kind regards, Heinz

[Johnny Peppers]

The recoil spring of the coil variety absolutely does provide tension on the toggle assembly while in battery. This is very easy to demonstrate for anyone who should question the statement. From the moment the coupling link rests solidly in the recoil spring lever, the assembly begins to come under spring tension and the spring tension must be overcome to bring everything into battery for complete assembly. As the coupling link just touches the recoil spring link, the toggle knobs are free to move out of battery slightly with no movement of the breech block which is being partially supported by the spring tension of the ejector. As the barrel/receiver group is moved rearward to allow the takedown lever to lock up, the toggle assembly has now come under spring tension from the recoil spring. The toggle knobs are now held in battery by spring tension from the recoil spring. Take the firing pin spring and ejector out, and the toggle knobs are still under tension from the recoil spring. Now take out the recoil spring and the toggle assembly is no longer supported by spring tension and will move at will.
Still doubt it? Take off one of the grips and watch the coupling link start to compress the recoil spring as the barrel/receiver assembly moves into locked position. Slightly lift the toggle knobs and let go. The spring tension they are under will snap them back into position. This has absolutely nothing to do with the centerline of the toggle assembly, but everything to do with spring tension.
Does anyone out there have a Luger that when completely and correctly assembled has no tension on the toggle knobs when in the locked position? On every one I tested, the toggle knobs may be raised approsimately .10 inch before the breech block starts to move. When released, the front and rear toggles snap smartly into locked position.

[Doubs]

As regards the question of main spring tension helping to keep the toggle train in it's locked or "battery" position, the answer can clearly be demonstrated by this experiment: Raise the toggles until the sear engages the firing pin and the toggles are held in the raised position. Turn the pistol upside down and squeeze the trigger. The toggles will slam shut and remain so. This would not be so if main spring tension was absent. I've even seen some Lugers with sufficient main spring tension to prevent the toggles from remaining raised even with the sear/firing pin engaged.

Removing the left grip panel will clearly show that there is still spring tension being applied by the main spring when the toggle train is closed.

[Jerry Harris]

Kyrie,
Although I can almost hear the sensible voices telling us to get a life, let's you and I play one more round in our corner of this interesting round-robin chess match. You wrote:

"...I agree that the change from the internal cam method of â??breaking the kneeâ?? of the toggle to the use of the inclined ramps on the frame are different methods. Iâ??m also in agreement that this change was a required one due to a preceding change (specifically the elimination [of the] rear mainspring and its housing). And I agree that the change was vital to getting a pistol that worked. And I quite agree on the attractiveness of the resulting pistol - else Iâ??d not be here :-)OTOH, and the place where I cordially disagree is on whether the change was trivial. Purely IMO, it was a trivial change, and the change itself was necessitated by another change. In essence, it was not a change to improve the Borchardt, but a change required to make theâ??Improved Borchardtâ?? work at all."

Okay - there's a historical visualization disparity between us. Perhaps you imagined Luger ripping off the spring housing, stuffing a spring into the new handle and and exclaiming "Gott in Himmel! Now there is nothing to break the toggle knee. I need a trivial change....Ah! I'll throw away this useless lever and roller and let the knobs hit the frame ramps, or else the gun won't work at all."

I, on the other hand, imagined Luger studying the Borchardt and thinking "I want that back bulge to go away. Let's see, I could take the spring and work it into a modified handle, but that would only remove part of the bulge, because the toggle-actuating lever and roller, and especially the cam, would still stick out to the rear. I must sleep on this." On the way to work next morning, a wheel of Luger's carriage strikes a curb and he is jolted upward. A moment later he exclaims "Gott in Himmel! All I have to do is let the cocking knobs hit those ramps that are sitting there contributing nothing, and I can throw away the lever and roller and cam, and the battle of the bulge is won. That is the breakthrough I needed."

We can't bring Luger back to enlighten us, but I looked through my books and found the next best thing. He can speak to us through a patent, specifically No. 639,414 granted Dec. 19, 1899, covering the 1895/96 Borchardt-Luger transition pistol. Exerpts from it appear on page 45 of the 1990 edition of Kenyon's "Lugers at Random."

The patent shows a pistol that carried the recoil spring in a raked handle. It had a smaller but still very prominent rear bulge because it retained the roller and cam to work the toggle. So Luger did move the spring first as you envisioned, but then designed a functional interim gun. Thus he was not forced to utilize the ramps in order to make the spring-in-handle concept work at all. After some reasonable period of time he came up with the second crucial improvement, which was to let the cocking knobs cam upward against the ramps. He could then empty out the rear bulge and remove it entirely.

To my mind, calling one of those two improvements trivial is like saying the left blade of a pair of scissors is fundamental for cutting, but the right blade is just a minor accessory! [img]smile.gif[/img]

[unspellable]

I think slight changes in the spring lever geometry would allow any reasonable grip angle. Here is my take on how we ended up with the angle we have.

The Borchardt cartridges case is more or less straight from head to shoulder and such a cartridge will stack nicely in a vertical magazine, ala Borchardt C93 and Mauser C96.

The 7.65 mm Parabellum cartridge has a tapered case. (For reasons I'll come to later.) Such a cartridge will not stack nicely in a vertical magazine and is normally associated with a "bannana" magazine, obviously not suitable. By making the over all length of the cartridge slightly greater than the length of the magazine it will rest in the magazine nose high with the nose bearing on the front of the magazine instead of the wall of the case on the case below. This also allows a greater overall length in a cartridge that began as a forced shortening of the Borchardt cartridge.

But now we are faced with cartridges that point up instead of at the breech. Solution? Slant the magazine backwards. Hence the grip angle we all know and love.

Why taper the cartridge? Easier extraction. The Borchardt with its rear roller almost pulls the action open while in the Luger a good deal of energy is expended breaking the toggle and there is no force tending to pull the action open, it's all done on momentum. (The recoil spring actually stores only about one third of the kinetic energy of the cannon, the rest is lost to extraction, ejection, breaking the knee, etc.) Hence easier extraction is a benifit. There are references to the Borchardt's action being smoother than the Luger's.

Like the 7.65 mm, the 9 mm has a tapered case. In more modern pistols the tapered case problem is handled by using a double stacker magazine and making the front a bit narrower so the cartridges are toed in and stack horizontally. There are a few single stackers around just to prove you can make anything work. There are even blow back operated pistols chambered for the 9 mm Parabellum just to prove you can make anything work if you go to suffiiently rediculous extremes.

[Gene]

Wes,

Possibly, your comment on the Borchardt might suggest to many that it was immediately considered unacceptable and rejected by the US Army: "He had presented his design in the USA and was shown the door."

In E.Scott Meadows' excellent book on US military automatic pistols, there is a detailed account of the Army's testing of the Borchardt for anyone who's interested. Suffice it to say that after the initial tests were quite successfully completed, the Army recommended that additional Borchardts be acquired for further testing. For whatever reason, no one followed up on that recommendation.

Years later, in the US Army tests of the M1900 Luger, an almost identical recommendation was made after the initial tests. But, this time, someone did follow up and purchase the 1,000 US test Lugers for testing in the field - before it was rejected.

Regards,
Gene

[Kyrie]

Hi Heinz!

[quote]Originally posted by Heinz:
<strong>
First I apologize if you thought my reference to imaginative reports applied to you.
(snippage)
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Thank you for the clarification. I understand much better what you meant, and sincerely apologize for reading more into your post than was there (face red with embarrassment).

Warm regards,

Kyrie

[Kyrie]

Hi Johnny!

[quote]Originally posted by Johnny Peppers:
<strong>
The recoil spring of the coil variety absolutely does provide tension on the toggle assembly while in battery. This is very easy to demonstrate for anyone who should question the statement.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I was referring to the original flat leaf recoil spring, but we can turn to a discussion of the coil recoil spring if you like :-)

[quote]Originally posted by Johnny Peppers:
<strong>
From the moment the coupling link rests solidly in the recoil spring lever, the assembly begins to come under spring tension and the spring tension must be overcome to bring everything into battery for complete assembly.
(snippage)
</strong><hr></blockquote>
While this is quite true itâ??s also quite irrelevant :-( We were discussing the participation of the recoil spring in bringing the toggle train back into battery during firing, which is another subject entirely.
During firing the recoil springâ??s tension ceases to be a significant factor during the last fraction of an inch the toggle train must travel to lock up. This too is easily demonstrated. To do so...
Insert an empty magazine in an unloaded Luger with a hold open device and pull the toggles up until they lock. Remove the magazine. Grasp the pistol firmly, pull up on the toggles to disengage the hold open, and slowly ease the down. The toggle train will stop short of going into battery, as the force needed to compress the striker spring is greater than the fore being exerted by the recoil spring. This is true of both the early flat leaf and the later coil main springs.

Warm regards,

Kyrie

[Kyrie]

Hi Doubs ,

[quote]Originally posted by Doubs:
<strong>As regards the question of main spring tension helping to keep the toggle train in it's locked or "battery" position, the answer can clearly be demonstrated by this experiment: Raise the toggles until the sear engages the firing pin and the toggles are held in the raised position. Turn the pistol upside down and squeeze the trigger. The toggles will slam shut and remain so. This would not be so if main spring tension was absent. I've even seen some Lugers with sufficient main spring tension to prevent the toggles from remaining raised even with the sear/firing pin engaged.
.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Respectfully, please reread my post - what I wrote was, â??The main spring plays no direct part in keeping the toggle closed.â?� Thatâ??s a true statement. What keeps the toggle train in battery is the rigidity of the toggle train with the toggle pivot point below the centerline of the toggle train. The recoil spring is not involved in this rigidity - itâ??s purely a mechanical lock.

The recoil spring does play some indirect part in retarding the opening of the toggle, by providing some small (small relative to the other forces in play) part in delaying in time the travel of the barrel/barrel extension to the point at which the toggle knobs engage the frame ramps and lift the toggle pivot point above the centerline of the toggle train. This effect is also what keeps the Lugerâ??s action from flopping open and closed is the pistol is waved around. But what is keeping the toggles closed is the mechanical lock of the toggle train - the recoil spring is serving only to inhibit travel of the barrel/barrel extension (which indirectly keeps the breechblock in battery by preventing the frame ramps from coming into contact with the toggle train).

Warm regards,

Kyrie

[Kyrie]

Hi Jerry!

[quote]Originally posted by Jerry Harris:
<strong>Kyrie,
Although I can almost hear the sensible voices telling us to get a life, let's you and I play one more round in our corner of this interesting round-robin chess match.
(snippage)
</strong><hr></blockquote>

Bless you, sir, you cracked me up with the â??...sensible voices telling us to get a lifeâ?� :-)

[quote]Originally posted by Jerry Harris:
<strong>Okay - there's a historical visualization disparity between us. Perhaps you imagined
(snippage)
</strong><hr></blockquote>

But when we get to the point we are imagining what the other person is imagining then we are at the point those â??sensible voicesâ?� are making sense, and itâ??s time to agree to disagree and move on. I understand and respect your views one this one, but cannot share them :-)

Warm regards,

Kyrie

[Kyrie]

Hi Unspellable!

[quote]Originally posted by unspellable:
<strong>I think slight changes in the spring lever geometry would allow any reasonable grip angle. Here is my take on how we ended up with the angle we have.

The Borchardt cartridges case is more or less straight from head to shoulder and such a cartridge will stack nicely in a vertical magazine, ala Borchardt C93 and Mauser C96.
(snippage)
</strong><hr></blockquote>

Iâ??m going to digress a bit here, or more properly regress to the original topic of the controversy and bad blood between Borchardt and DWM. The beginning of this antipathy may predate the entrance of Georg Luger, and have begun with DWM either furnishing (or permitting - itâ??s unclear) the use of the 7.65 Borchardt cartridges in the development of the Mauser C96. This was apparently done without the knowledge or permission of Hugo Borchardt, and without any kind of compensation. There are at least hints in the literature that Borchardt was most unhappy that DWM permitted his cartridge to be used in the development of a competing design - especially a competing design that was to be so successful!

By the time Georg Luger came along to improve the Borchardt pistol, Hugo Borchardt may have already have had a jaundiced view of the integrity of DWM and been primed to perceive any action by DWM to change his design as the first step in stealing it away from him. His reluctance to let Luger change his design may well have been due more to his mistrust of DWM than to any fits of â??inventor egoâ?�.

Itâ??s an interesting line of speculation :-)

Warm regards,

Kyrie

[Kyrie]

Hi Gene!

Excellent post, and spot on :-)

We also need to remember that Borchardt had a hand in designing a number of different firearms, including the Sharps/Borchardt rifle that was fairly successful here in the US. Hugo Borchardt was (at least in my opinion) quite the mechanical genius and made significant contributions to advancing firearms technology. His largest failing was an inability to retain ownership of his inventions - and not any lack of quality in the inventions themselves.

Warm regards,

Kyrie
[quote]Originally posted by Gene:
<strong>Wes,

Possibly, your comment on the Borchardt might suggest to many that it was immediately considered unacceptable and rejected by the US Army: "He had presented his design in the USA and was shown the door."

In E.Scott Meadows' excellent book on US military automatic pistols, there is a detailed account of the Army's testing of the Borchardt for anyone who's interested. Suffice it to say that after the initial tests were quite successfully completed, the Army recommended that additional Borchardts be acquired for further testing. For whatever reason, no one followed up on that recommendation.

Years later, in the US Army tests of the M1900 Luger, an almost identical recommendation was made after the initial tests. But, this time, someone did follow up and purchase the 1,000 US test Lugers for testing in the field - before it was rejected.

Regards,
Gene</strong><hr></blockquote>

[wterrell]

Kyrie,

How could that be an "excellent" post, whenever it was based upon an erroneous supposition? [quote]Possibly, your comment on the Borchardt might suggest to many that it was immediately considered unacceptable and rejected by the US Army...

<hr></blockquote>

I did not consider it worthy of a response as it was only a wrested introduction to Gene's book review.

[Doubs]

Hi Kyrie,

An interesting thread, indeed! I submit, however, that the recoil spring does, in fact, act to keep the mechanical lock you speak of locked. Another experiment will clearly demonstrate this.

Disengage the recoil spring and see how much force it requires to "break" the mechanical lock of the toggle train. It will be, of course, less than with the recoil spring engaged. But, there is resistance from the very beginning of the movement of the breechblock, caused by the firing pin spring/sear/sear notch of the firing pin all causing friction. Turn the whole thing over and even with a sharp downward movement and sudden stop, the train remains in battery.

Now remove the firing pin, FP spring and keeper. Reassemble only the "cannon". There is now no main spring tension and no friction from the firing pin components. Suddenly, the force needed to break the mechanical lock of the toggle train is practically nothing. Turning the cannon over and with a short drop and stop, the mechanical lock will break without fail.

With the firing pin components still removed, reassemble the cannon to the frame and engage the recoil spring. Try to break the toggle train's mechanical lock and you'll find considerable force is needed from the very beginning as the recoil spring exerts considerable downward force on the whole train... conclusive proof that the recoil spring not only applies pressure through out the toggle train's full range of motion but also helps to keep it locked in battery while working against pressure from the firing pin components when cocked.

The mechanical lock you speak of can be demonstrated by disconnecting the recoil spring and then cocking the firing pin and lowering the toggle train into battery. Without the mechanical lock, the firing pin spring would pop the toggles upward. Push upward slightly on the toggles and they will spring to the broken position. If the recoil spring didn't exert force on the toggle train while in battery, the slighest pressure against the toggles would cause them to break when the firing pin was cocked. It takes considerably more force with the recoil spring engaged than with it disengaged.

So, while I acknowledge that the mechanical lock does exist, I still maintain that it's the recoil spring pressure on the toggle train that acts to keep it in battery and is more of a factor than the mechanical lock which will almost fall open on it's own when force from the recoil spring and firing pin components are absent.

[Johnny Peppers]

Kyrie,
Irrelevant or not, these are your words.

-------------------------------------------------

Respectfully, no sir. What keeps the toggle closed is the rigidity of the toggle train with the toggle train pivot point below the centerline of the toggle train, The main spring plays no direct part in keeping the toggle closed.

-------------------------------------------------

Also, it does not matter which recoil spring we are discussing, the toggle assembly has come under spring tension when the toggle assembly is in battery. Simply lifting the toggle knobs on a Luger with either spring will demostrate this. Has it occurred to you that the toggle train is not rigid, and with each firing has three toggle points that move freely when the tension of the recoil spring is overcome, and are brought back and held in battery by the tension of the recoil spring?
Irrelevant? I don't know what it had to do with the discussion, but to say the Sharps-Borchardt (Model 1878) was "fairly" successful is like saying the Edsel was a smashing success. A whopping 22,000 in sales of the Model 1878 is hardly successful by any measurement. Without the almost 12,000 in government sales, it would have been a financial flop.

[Dwight Gruber]

I never thought I'd get involved in this discussion, but experiment of breaking the toggle with the recoil spring attached vs. disconnedted bothered me.

Try this experiment.

Remove the cannon from the frame (this removes the recoil spring from the equation). Remove the firing pin, to eliminate all spring influence. Insert a rod--pencil, whatever--into the barrel, and try to break the toggle by pushing on the breechblock face. Cannot be done, the geometry of the toggle train absolutely prevents the breech from opening. Turn the cannon upside-down, and the same result obtains. Incontrovertable proof that the geometry of the toggle train -alone- locks the breech.

You may find, in the inverted test, that the weight of the toggle knobs is enough to overcome the geometry lock, and lead you to conclude that the recoil spring does, indeed, play a part in keeping the breech closed. However, if you very carefully close the breech and handle the cannon such that the toggle does not fall open, the breech cannot be opened by pressure on the breech face (re-inserting the firing pin provides enough spring pressure on the toggle train to resist the force of gravity when inverted).

The difference is:

1. The geometry of the toggle train forces the breech to remain locked under -linear- pressure, -unless- acted upon by an external tangential force--the toggle ramps, hand operation, or the force of gravity.

2. The striker spring adds -additional- linear force to resist tangential force which may act upon the toggle train.

3. The recoil spring resists -rotational- motion of the rear toggle piece which occurs once the linear geometry of the toggle train is changed.

None of this, by the way, is intended to explain the forces and actions which close and lock the breech [img]wink.gif[/img]

--Dwight

[Heinz]

Three points to add to this interesting thread.

1. Toggle stability. Georg Luger (or his engineers) in the US patent granted in 1904 included toggle locks in the design. Note the following language from the patent:

The projection cx at the joint of the toggle levers is provided with a hooked catch member f, (see fig 4, 4a and 8) which engages with a projection t on the reciever C when the breech is closed. The catch member t (shown in detail on fig 4a) is preferably a spring actuated catch member being pivoted to the projection cx by a pin t and provided with a spring t. These catch members hold the toggle levers in closed position and prevent them from rising until the hooked end of the catch member t has been slid rearwardly from under the projection t'

2. Grip angle. In an earlier patent granted Dec. 19, 1899, to Georg Luger for grip safeties, the patent drawings show a pistol with a Borchart style hump behind the grip with the internal style toggle cam from the Borchardt but the typical Luger grip angle we all know and love. This pistol does employ a flat spring in the grip but the position is not dependent on the toggle action. MAybe the luger that nevers was? Or perhaps one will hit the market soon.

3. Borchardt grip angle. In the Hugo Borchardt US patent granted Nov, 10, 1986, Borchardt claims the grip angle as one of the patent features of his pistol. He claims it is a more natural angle for the arm muscles, gives a better balance and improves the aim. {his opinion not mine :-)) There are also claims about reducing the recoil felt but these are mixed in with claims that the toggle action does this. Perhaps Borchardt fell out with his chief designer and salesman over this feature.