bhp9
05-06-2008, 05:36 PM
One of the most finicky of all military pistols has to be the German Luger. Just getting it to work reliably with jacketed bullets is sometimes a challenge that drives a Saint to cuss a blue streak.
I tried many times to make my Luger work with cast bullets and tried all the standard tricks such as using the Lyman 402 conical 121 grain bullet and loading it to an OAL of 1.180 and using 4.5 grains of Unique powder. All of which worked with Jacketed bullets without jamming (for less than 50 rounds) but would not work at all with cast bullets as after about the 7th round fired the gun would start to jam up.
Eventually I traced the problem down to the 50/50 alox lube I was using as it was gumming up the very tightly fitted toggle action of the Luger. By using very hard Red Rooster rifle lube this solved the problem and the cast bullets were then as reliable as the jacketed loads were and I might add just as accurate.
I tried many times to make my Luger work with cast bullets and tried all the standard tricks such as using the Lyman 402 conical 121 grain bullet and loading it to an OAL of 1.180 and using 4.5 grains of Unique powder. All of which worked with Jacketed bullets without jamming (for less than 50 rounds) but would not work at all with cast bullets as after about the 7th round fired the gun would start to jam up.
Eventually I traced the problem down to the 50/50 alox lube I was using as it was gumming up the very tightly fitted toggle action of the Luger. By using very hard Red Rooster rifle lube this solved the problem and the cast bullets were then as reliable as the jacketed loads were and I might add just as accurate.