It is a sin to use the word "clip". Thou shall only use the word "clip" only when referring to stripper clips or the M1 Garand.

Since the M-11 has been chambered in so many different magazines I have broken them down into categories:

Even though the metal magazines are considered the preferred material over the polymer magazines, they can be just as unreliable if you don’t purchase a magazine made by a reputable manufacture.

Generally if you stick to a factory produced / licensed magazine (IE: those with Cobray stamps) you should not run into many problems.

Off shoot copies have a tendency to be out of spec or made out of cheaper steel. Stay away from magazines produced by the brand “USA”, these are some of the worst.

Metal magazines for the SWD guns produced in South Africa & Argentina are the most sought after because the other alternatives are the unreliable polymer magazines. These magazines are a little thicker then the Zytels so you may have to file the edges a little or else you wont be able to insert them with the factory stock in collapsed position. This is normally not a problem since most people shot their guns with the stock extended.

You can find Metal magazines ranging in a number of capacities from 10 to 32 rounds usually for both the 9mm Luger and .380 ACP M-11s.

Polymer magazines were considered the future in magazine development. Light weight and cheap to produce, SWD thought they had a break through with magazines produced using the material Zytel. Unfortunately this was not to be the case. The M-11 magazine design was not very friendly to magazines made out of Zytel and this decision led to a host of reliability problems that stemmed from the magazine.

Over time the magazine feed lips would be worn away & the pressure from loading a magazine near capacity would cause the magazine lips to spread out. This led to jamming & miss-feeds because the feed angle of the round was altered. The glue used to bind the two halves of the magazine would also come “unglued” and the magazine would split rendering it useless.

Unfortunately for the SWD guns a lot of the stories about the gun being a “unreliable pos” were a result of the magazine and not the gun.

Before metal replacement magazines were in country from South Africa & Argentina a lot of people had there SWD guns converted to Sten or UZI magazines during the AWB years (1994-2004) because decent replacement magazines were hard or nonexistent to come by.

Today a few of the past issues with the Zytels have been solved. You can now purchase steel feed lips for them and now that the magazine ban is over with new replacements can be purchased.

You can find Zytel magazines ranging in a number of capacities from 10 to 32 rounds usually for both the 9mm Luger and .380 ACP M-11s.

The STEN magazine conversion was the most popular conversion during the AWB period because of the number of magazines available cheap. Some conversions were done poorly so make sure you know who did the conversion. If you stick to guns converted by Craig Wheatly you should be fine.

Also since the STEN magazines are almost always surplus some of them may have excessive wear and not feed. But they are so cheap you can get 5-10 of them for the price of one good steel M-11 magazine.

The biggest drawback to the STEN magazine is that you really need a loader for the magazines. Since they are single stack it is really a choir just trying to get the rounds in by hand.

A fun little fact is that some M-11s produced by SWD were originally designed for STEN magazines and there are actually some STEN magazines out there with Cobray stamps!

STEN magazines primarly hold 32 rounds but "garage" conversions can be found that range from 10 to 50 rounds. The STEN magazine is only in 9mm Luger.