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A LITTLE BACKGROUND

The pistol popularly known as the Luger began to take shape in 1893 when Hugo Borchardt, inspired by the success of the Maxim machinegun, built his toggle action automatic pistol. But this was not Maxim’s heavy, robust, virtually jam-proof design with plenty of places for dirt to hide. The Borchardt featured a toggle that was very lightweight and bottomed out on the bottom of the pistol, where enough dirt can jam the gun. It’s an overcentered, toggle-leveraged action, which means the toggle lock was over the centerline of the cartridge. This mechanism is an inclined plane so the action doesn’t open on itself.

The quality of the Krieghoff Essencia hand-made Best Quality sidelock shotgun rivals that of the finest British doubles. The Krieghoff Lugers are made to precisely the same standards.

The longer the cartridge and the greater the mass of the gun, the better the Borchardt worked. In a lightweight gun with a short cartridge, you get too fast a cycle time for proper feeding. The slower burning the powder, the slower the breechblock goes back, thus partially offsetting a fast action cycle. Therefore Hugo Borchardt decided to put a 7.63 bullet of 85 grains in a bottlenecked case with slow burning powders for a velocity of 1,280 fps. Mauser would later take this cartridge and increase the velocity to 1,410 fps for his M1896 Mauser military pistol. The Borchardt had a vertical grip, so there was virtually no drag on the cartridges as they were fed through the magazine, which contributed greatly to its reliability.