‘Fabricators’ Luger P04 holster: Review

Having finished my P04 Naval Luger, I had been tucking it into my belt for a few weeks and needed a better carrying solution. There are a few holsters about and I picked this one up from Ebay from a seller based in India called ‘Fabricators’.

At £27, free postage I thought it was worth a punt. If it was truly dreadful I could send it back or sell it on easily enough!

On the back, there are two loops to hang it on a belt. There is no way to stop it moving on said belt, but that is the way of German webbing. British webbing kind of spoils you !

The quality of the stitching is very good overall, there are no places where I am anxious about it coming loose.

Down the side, there is a space for a cleaning rod. This is one aspect I was nervous of: in the picture on Ebay the Sam Browne stud was not well fitted. In the example I received it was however and the slot to close the flap well sized, not too tight or loose.

Inside the flap of the holster, there is a pouch for the disassembly tool.

And as a rather nice touch, it came with the disassembly tool! The pistol is a good fit, it sits deeply in the holster.

On the side there is a tab, which you pull to lift the pistol and grab the grip.

So, the downsides. The quality of the finish of the leather is not the best. It is painted on and not deep set within the material. In the picture above you can see a line above the cleaning rod pouch where it has flaked a bit, which is how it came rather than wear. Also, there are a few spots where glue has been slightly misplaced.

However, for a hard leather holster for an unusual pistol I am pleased with it for the price. My main kit is British, so it will only be used when I fancy a change or when I’m playing CQB and am not using the Webley.

 

I’m not going to score items when I review, the numbers are subjective and meaningless. Instead, I judge items by whether a) I would buy it again if I needed another and b) whether I would recommend it to a friend. In this case, the answer is the same to both: Yes.

 

This may not be the best quality bit of kit out there, but it is a very fair price for what it is. To get better, you would have to spend a good deal more money-if you could even find one for this particular pistol.

 

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P04 Navy Luger: Complete

Some pictures of the completed build! It’s not 100%, I think I will re-visit the rear sight at some point in the future and improve on the shape a little.

With the exception of the areas left in the white, there is a thin coat of paint over the whole pistol in a dark blue, to try and simulate the blued effect of the original. It is quite successful, though the dream is to have an all steel model that is correctly blued!

The text is slightly highlighted with off-white paint to improve visibility as well as authenticity.

The original magazine plugs of the era were wooden, sadly this can’t be achieved with this model but I have painted them to give some of the effect for now until I can find a solution.

And the DWM mark on the toggle lock. I need to find a way to fill this more effectively with paint, for some reason the usual technique isn’t working so well but the etching itself was satisfying!

 

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To see the whole of this build from the start, you can see it here.

P04 Navy Luger: Part 2

When testing the Luger the first time round I found a few issues with certain features. The barrel’s paint job wasn’t ideal, I just did a quick spray job to make it usable at the time. I could have re-done it with several coats and lacquer but decided instead that Oil finishing was the way to go. I cleaned the barrel, heated the piece and dropped it in the oil tank.

(If you want to see how oil finishing works, you can check out this article here).

Also, the single screw holding the rear sight came loose under recoil after about half a day’s play so I added a second screw and loctite to keep it tight and in place.

A second day’s testing and it’s ready to have the finishing touches added!

A few last bits of paint…

 

Finished photographs to follow soon.

If this post has inspired you to want a gun of your own, drop us an email at: enquiries.vintageairsoft@gmail.com to discuss or join us on Facebook!

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P04 Navy Luger: Part 1

Just to remind you, this is how the KWC P08 Luger starts out life! All black with minimal markings.

As I wanted a usable gun ASAP, my first modifications were internal. Using the ‘shot in the back test’, I determined that it was shooting much too hot for a pistol (at a guess  400fps plus with .25s). I trimmed approximately 8mm off the mainspring to make the hammer strike much softer.

While in there, I modified the hop. This gun has a fixed hop and in its natural state is very over-hopped. A dremmel tool took it down to the level it needed to be. The gun now fires at 309fps.

The next step and first aesthetic change, is the grips. These came in brown bakelite or walnut normally so two a red/brown mix of acrylic paints were used, followed by a spray-on varnish to protect them during use. To create the inconsistent, almost dappled effect I mixed small amounts of paint at a time so that it was not a consistent colour all the way across. If you want to do one thing to improve your replica Luger this is the best you can do! In the long term I plan to make walnut grips for it.

The next external improvement is the barrel. The P08 has a 4″ barrel, the P04 has a 6″ barrel. This piece is turned from black mild steel round bar on the lathe, inside has to be drilled to several different diameters to make it function with the internal parts. For now I am keeping the original barrel but there is scope to upgrade and lengthen the barrel.

With the inside fitting snugly, I could check the action operated properly. In the picture below you can see the old and new barrels side by side.

I could then weld on the foresight unit, which itself was hand-made and welded together in advance.

 

And cleaned up and back on the gun.

The rear sight is also very different. For the P08, a simple flat bar with a V-notch is used, the P04 however uses a large, finned tangent style sight.

So the sight has to go!

This makes space for the new rear sight unit, which is fixed rather than adjustable. In the longer term I would like to replace this with an adjustable one as per the originals.

It’s held onto the toggle with a screw. If this proves insufficient I’ll add in a second screw.

In context on the gun.

Obviously it needs a little bit of cleaning up!

Moving onto some detail work now, starting with etching the DWM logo onto the toggle. I produced a dxf file of the logo, shrank it down to the correct size and printed it out. Here it is superglued to the toggle.

I then followed the lines with the etching tool.

I could then get started on cleaning the paint finish off some of the components that were left in the white on the original gun.

So far, so good!

I need to work on getting the logo finished nicely now, but the majority of the work is finished!

 

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P-04 Navy ‘Luger’

Disclaimer: The Germans never referred to their toggle-locked service pistol as the Luger officially. However in this history of the pistol I will refer to the various models as the Luger as it is far more commonly known by that name today.

The P-08

The most well-known rendition of the Luger pistol is the P-08, adopted by the German Army after extensive trials as a pistol and another version (with an 8″ barrel, removable stock and adjustable tangent sight) was adopted as an artillery carbine. However, this was not the first rendition of a toggle-lock pistol, nor even the first Luger.

The Borchardt C-93 was the first use of a toggle-lock, however it was somewhat clunky and quite uncomfortable.

Georg Luger took this design and made huge improvements to the balance, weight and ergonomics, much to the chagrin of Hugo Borchardt who felt his idea had been ‘stolen’. However the improvements Luger made to this mechanism really made it viable for use as a sidearm.

This was then adopted by the Swiss (who had a reputation of staying ahead of the curve) and four years later by the Imperial German Navy in 1904. This featured a rear sight adjustable to 100 and 200m and a 6″ barrel. This is the rendition in question.

 

While it is possible to get Lugers in all three German service versions that take green gas, they have a bit of a varied reputation, among which problems include firing full auto on occasion. I’m also a CO2 man myself, I much prefer the stability and reliability of CO2 cartridges.

The KWC Luger P08 will be the donor for this conversion, which will feature a longer barrel, the adjustable rear sight, new grips, lots of extra detailing (including maker’s marks missing on the KWC), some tweaks to the magazine and an overall refinishing. Plus some internal modifications to make it skirmishable as it is firing pretty hot, as my back will testify.

As the Webley is my main sidearm, I forget sometimes how big it is. KWC’s 1:1 Luger is no midget of a gun, but it is positively tiny in comparison.

I’d like to go into a lot more detail about the history of the toggle-lock and the Luger specifically as it had a long and successful service life as well as entry into a number of trials in countries that nearly adopted the Luger but it’s a broad subject and at the moment building the replicas is what allows me to do this blog rather than the other way around. If you want to see more content along those lines, let me know and I’ll try and write more.

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