Does any one have a good load recipe for the luger? I know they like a hotter load than available with present day factory loads. I would like to use bullseye or unique as that's what I have available. Thanks.

Any full-powered factory load should work fine in a P-08, provided it is loaded with round nose 115 to 125 grain full metal jacketed bullets. No need to buy or load ammo to +P pressure.

I would recommend you ask that question on one of the two luger forums. It my understanding +p is not recommended. Wk

Start at 5gr of Unique, 124gr RNFMJ, work up in 1/10gr increments until you get 100% bolt lock.

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NRA Cert. Inst. IDPA CSO

I have a parts gun that I shoot pretty regularly, it has never jammed on any factory 115 or 124 grain rounds. It has even gone through a couple mags of hornady 124 XTPs just for fun, and it never hiccupped.

I think that the rumor that lugers need hot ammo is a fallacy, the truth is they need good magazines to function well.

5 grains works great in mine.

I shot one magazine of Black Talons through mine when I first got it.
A special gun deserves special bullets.

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A real sucker for the J-frames

My old parts gun digests 115 grain aluminum Blazers just fine.

I shoot anything from 105-147gn bullets through my P-08s. None require hot loads. No load is any different from any other 9x19. No load has been special to the P-08.
The only concern is that the guns are many years old and parts may be somewhat hard to find.
Just load like ALWAYS--start with starting loads and work up.
My P-08s feed L-SWCs perfectly. Penn's 115gn L-SWC is excellent. Missouri Bullets has a great 124-125gn L-SWC. Just slug your barrel--they also have coated bullets, if you don't want simply cast lead.
Zero 121 38 Super JHP works great.

The old 9mm's like the Luger and my Radom were brought up
on standard 9mm ammo pressures, since the +P ammo was
not in the mix back then for the pistols.
Any higher pressure or later Nato type ammo was used for the
machine guns, that needed higher pressure to work the action.

If you like your pistols and want them to keep working, stay
with the standard pressure loads. 340 ft/lbs of energy is plenty
when you think of the 38 snub nose with only 260 ft/lbs on its side
with the big 158gr FBI load..

I agree with the others. I have two WW2 era Lugers and they function
just fine on rather mild 115 gr FMJ factory ammo. I would not shoot
+P ammo in them.

Well, historically there may have been somthing to that. Remember before the Wonder Nine era 9mmLuger ( as then marked ) ammo was not a popular cal in the US , and Us made ammo was loaded mild , milder than CIP specs. It was a very common theme in the gun periodicals of the day for people to write in that their Lugers would cycle properly. The usual remedy was triming the spring to allow full cycling. As further data point , good friends father had a matching number P-08 , and had similar complaint.

By the late '70s as there were modern 9mm pistols , and intrest in them for LE / SD , and early JHP loads were coming on the market , the ammo was uploaded to upper end of SAAMI .

One takeaway , is if you don't know the complete history of a particular Luger , it may have received a reduced spring in the '60s or early '70s ., so a fresh spring is cheap prevention.

For the OP , just like any gun, start low , work up for 100% function , withing published data.

Shooting a firearm with possibly 100 year old recoil springs could cause problems. I've seen posts that state "Use hot loads in a luger to ensure operation." This statement is valid if you have a factory spec spring. A weak spring will batter the frame. This is from a previous post:

"REPLACE THE RECOIL SPRING!! Be prepared for bleeding fingers. Good demos for this on YouTube.
I get short cycling on ALL of mine (2-30s, 1-9mm) with US ammo. I handload fairly stout for them.
Place a piece of masking tape on the rear of the receiver where the rear toggle bumps it, then fire a shot and examine the tape. If the tape is cut through your cartridge is loaded too hot or your recoil spring is too weak (At least for the load you're using)."
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I don't have Alzheimer's- My wife had me tested.

After working up from below minimums in the lee modern reloading i found out that mine functions good with following recipes:

The recipes i give here are minimums: just enough to function with a reasonable ammount of failures (one every 3 magazines or something like that): so definately not hot loads


125 grains lead copper plated round nose H & N bullets:

VV N320 3.7 grains COL 29.0 mm
VV N340 4.3 grains COL 29.0 mm
VV N350 4.6 grains COL 29.0 mm

Hope someone finds it useful,

Varel

This!
My Luger likes (as do many of my 9mm pistols) a 124 gr FMJ over 5.2 gr Unique.
1.150" COAL

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Thugs that comply don’t die!

Stick with velocities like the original loadings. I have good results in a 1937 and a 1970s Mauser P.08s with velocities in the 1050-1100 fps range.

Older versions of the cartridge had an overall length slightly longer than current production. So, if you have feeding problems I'd experiment in the 29-30mm range and see what works in your gun.

A lot of good information can be found at Pistole Parabellum

Back when I owned and fired a Luger (over many years, I had five different Lugers), my standard load was 4.7 grains of Green Dot with a 124 grain lead RN bullet, it worked fine. I remember that I did need to replace the action spring of my last Luger with a new one, as the one it came with was too weak. A very simple job to do.