Is it small or large mag well

[ktk120]

The only thing I will add is I think just like with RPB using up and re stamping what they got from the bankrupcy auctions I imagine SWD did some of the same. The timeline before the registry closed was looming and there probably was not time to have parts made and if you bought drums of finish chemicals and boxes of already made small magwell and you had enough allocated flats it would have been prudent to use up what you had. I think its fair to say some where made but nearly everyone seems to get a small and send it off to be made into a large so the examples are likely even rarer than in the past. When some of the boomers collections hit the markets in teh coming decades and there are half a dozen or more MAC in their probably many new in the box is when you will see more examples of the various configurations. I love this small magwell so far but I absolutely despise the 380 caliber myself.

 

[mattnh]

fwiw, the guy i bought that gun from said he was a retiring CIII selling out the last of his inventory. supposedly, this gun was from a pallet load he'd bought back in the day from one of the bankruptcies. i know, you buy the gun and not the story. but this gun was about as immaculate as it could be NIB. at the time i didn't know anything about these other than it was just about the cheapest FA you could buy. i paid $2900 for it and thought that was outrageous.

Sounds like Jim McCloud

 

[3154tm]

Sounds like Jim McCloud

it was Mid-Cities Firearms Co. in Texas

 

[SecondAmend]

Put a Fleming .22LR upper on the M11-380 submachine gun and the "small or large magwell" question becomes moot.

 

[MitchWerbellsGhost87]

The only thing I will add is I think just like with RPB using up and re stamping what they got from the bankrupcy auctions I imagine SWD did some of the same. The timeline before the registry closed was looming and there probably was not time to have parts made and if you bought drums of finish chemicals and boxes of already made small magwell and you had enough allocated flats it would have been prudent to use up what you had. I think its fair to say some where made but nearly everyone seems to get a small and send it off to be made into a large so the examples are likely even rarer than in the past. When some of the boomers collections hit the markets in teh coming decades and there are half a dozen or more MAC in their probably many new in the box is when you will see more examples of the various configurations. I love this small magwell so far but I absolutely despise the 380 caliber myself.

They absolutely did. All of the early SWD stuff was either RPB leftovers or built out of RPB leftovers. Those guns I posted earlier are likely the earliest of SWD papered M11 380s. The “SSM11” was RPB’s attempt at skirting the open bolt law. They took an M11 380 open bolt and slapped a metal plate over the magwell opening, and sold it as a “single shot” breech loading M11 380 open bolt pistol. The ATF was so totally not having this at all. They almost immediately declared the SSM11A1 to be a machine gun. This was at the end of 1982, right when RPB was closing their doors. RPB auctioned everything off in 82… Wayne Daniel bought most of it from himself, all the M11 stuff. Wayne and his wife formed SWD, in her name, probably because of all the ATF heat on Wayne from RPB. SWD had all of those leftover “SSM11” marked frames, all machine guns as declared by the AFT. So SWD started assembling and selling the SSM11 RPB marked guns as transferable machine guns. They marked them with “SWD ATL” under the plastic grip. At least one of these guns ended up being assembled with a large grip ( I posted a pic of it). This was in 1983-84. As far as I know it wasn’t until 84-85 that they started selling their own SWD marked M11A1 SMG. So by this point they had already switched to the large grip with the leftover RPB stuff, so it’s odd they would start using small grips again… only thing I can think of is that they probably uncovered another box of small magwells buried under some crap and used them up.

On a side note, a handful of those RPB SSM11 pistols made it out onto the market, to this day the ATF is still seizing them when they turn up. I saw one sell on GB a couple years ago as a normal semi auto pistol, it had the plate removed from the magwell.