[MikeJackmin]

I have a 9mm luger pistol which seems to be in perfect working order; however, I am having a heck of a time chambering the first round from a loaded magazine.

When the loaded mag is inserted, the action can only be opened part of the way - the breechface will come close to, but not quite behind, the base of the cartridge. When the mag is removed, the action opens fully without difficulty.

If I open the action, hold the bolt back with my thumb, and then insert the mag, it'll work just fine, but needless to say this gets old pretty quick. What am I missing?

[RecoilRob]

I just pulled mine out and loaded it. First, the Luger has GOT to have the strongest magazine spring ever used! Wow! Where is my mag key?

But, it didn't take all that much more effort to rack the toggle with full mag in as empty pistol.

Only things that come to mind are: Is the mag matching to the pistol? If not, might be a tad high which increases bolt drag on the top round. My mags are not matching but they work fine in my well worn shooter.

And, have you tried 'sling-shotting' the toggle with a bit of force? I'll bet if you give it a quick, hard yank that it will feed just fine.

Or, you can always lock the toggle back on an empty mag before loading them. That is the way I normally shoot mine as it makes latching the mag so much easier without the need to compress that fully compressed spring any further to get it to seat.

[Gordon]

Get a Meggar magazine and keep the others for collectors items (they are) .When I shoot my Lugers the last 7 years or so I started using the good Meggar mags, which seem to give 100% cycling in the half dozen Lugers I tried them in.;)

[MikeJackmin]

I went back to have another look at this gun, and found that the toggle would not come all the way back if even an empty magazine was inserted. I toggled the safety on and off, tried it again and it worked fine.

Now the problem is gone and the pistol functions perfectly. Next time I take this thing apart I'll see if I can puzzle out what was going on in there.

[RecoilRob]

AH Good! Nothing but a little congealed oil sticking the toggle stop perhaps?

Anyway, glad to hear the Luger is operational.

[denfoote]

What kind of Luger do you have??

The Luger was mostly a hand made weapon. There are "differences" depending on what factory it was made!! They are enough to ensure that there was no interchangeability of parts, including mags!! This was the primary reason why all the parts on any given Luger were serial numbered!!!
If a part broke, there were spares with the same number that could be substituted.

The aftermarket mags are patterned after the 1936 Mauser. If you have an Erfurt or DWM, then there is no guarantee that any SPECIFIC mag will function!!

I went round and round with this with a friend of mine who was into Lugers. This is a summery of what we learned.