The Reising

CountryGent · Jan 30, 2021

Little ones down, wife warming herself and watching video, long day almost done, so I'm left to my own devices again. I spy on Gunbroker a transferable Reising:

Comes with three mags. Hmmm .... tempting. I was poo-pooed about these on a NFA forum years back, but I hit "watch".

Worth the trouble or keep moving? What say you?

gmerkt · Jan 30, 2021

One thing H&R got right on those was the wood.

You know how some of those survived to be NFA guns. Many of them were offed to various police departments during the war after the USMC no longer was interested.

Highway · Jan 31, 2021

I owned one of those a while back. It was a bit of a rattle trap as tolerances on it were pretty loose. I would get 2-3 stoppages in a 20rd mag. ROF is roughly 600-800 rpm and somewhat controllable because of the upward gas venting compensator. It was definitely fun to shoot, but I sold it because of the unreliability and stoppages issue.

Parts availability is limited. I believe Joe Mannza at Keystone Arms bought up the last of the sizable parts lot available about 15 years ago. I don't know what he still has available. Mags have always been scarce and a guy named Ken Christie at one time commissioned a machine shop to produce highly reliable aftermarket ones. However, Ken was not able to procure the die set to produce these mags as the shop kept it as their own property. What run of mags Ken had produced is what is available today. They use to run $75/mag about 13 years ago.
You will also find that the finned compensator on a lot of well-shot out guns will have the fins missing. Again, I was unable to find these at one time and had to pay a gunsmith to machine a new one for my Reising.

If you do buy a Reising, buy the book "The Reising Submachine Gun Story" by Frank Iannamico. It is a very comprehensive book about this gun.

Finally, this is a C&R gun so if you have a license you can directly have it transfer to you on a form 4 without any dealer involved.

CountryGent · Jan 31, 2021

Thanks for the feedback. This one is listed with "3-30rnd Christie mags", so presumably the mentioned aftermarket ones. From what I read on another NFA site, they run well. However, I have no experience with them.

Ryo · Feb 28, 2021

They are fun to shoot. There are some modifications that should be done to them to help them run better.
1. File down the firing pin to make it a inertia firing pin. This is highly recommended so that the firing pin doesn't break. What happen is that the firing pin is impacted by the hammer which impacts the primer of the round. The issue is that it does it at the same time, constant contact which can bend the firing pin, causing metal fatigue, and eventual breakage. So if you file the back of the firing pin to make it shorter.. where when the hammer is fully forward and the firing pin doesn't contact the primer. It has been proven on many Reisings that the inertia mod works. The hammer (which looks like a cylinder) is quite heavy and hits the pin hard enough to set off primers.

USMC did use the Reising in war.. but they had issues due to the Reising sent to war were all hand-fitted, hence parts were not quite interchangeable due to tolerance issues. The issue was when they cleaned the parts, they just threw them in a bucket and since the parts were not serialized to the gun, they mismatched the parts. The outcome is the SMG failed. Police depts wouldn't have this issue hence you hear that they typically ran okay for them.

One of the big issues of Reising is the magazines. Prices are crazy for them. If you keep your eye out, sometimes you can find a okay price. They have 13rd, and 20rd magazines. Aftermarket they have 30rd magazines by Christie and Keystone. Christies are typically the most reliable of the aftermarket ones, but that's not always guaranteed. Christie sold his stuff to Keystone who is still making parts for Reisings. Keystone is still making magazines.. though they always have it out of stock. Reason why I know they are still making them was a half a year ago I pestered them about if they were going to make more, and they said they would but COVID was screwing them up. Then later in 2020, they had a presale of 30rd magazines.. I bought a few of them but had to wait months before they shipped. I did get them and this does fit my Reising.. which I'm happy about.
(Side story.. I bought multiple Christie magazines but all failed. First 2 were actually Thompson SMG magazines (fake Christies) converted to Reising which was a miserable failure, then the last one I bought was the real thing, but it didn't quite fit my Reising without needing some feedlip modification. Considering it is a expensive magazine, I decided to sell it. Reason why it didn't fit was due to the action bar was not wide enough for the Christie mag I got. Note that I have a low S/N Reising so likely the issue was fixed in later ones, but that's a guess on my part.)
Any case the Keystone one made it to the Reising spec and it fits in easily so I'm extremely happy.. but reliability still need to be tested. All the 13rd and 20rd I had bought fit fine. I did have some stoppages, on some old Reising magazines, but not all. I haven't shot it enough to test to see if it is magazine related.. It's possibly that they just need a new magazine springs due to age.. some of these magazines might be older than me!

Oh and the fins on the compensator. I don't have experience with them, but there has been people who had it break off. I think there were 2 or more types, one more fragile than the other, but I'm really not sure about this one. Just that I have heard them breaking.. and apparently Highway sadly has had more experience with that.

Any case for the price Reising is worth getting. It's one of the undervalued SMGs in my opinion.

BTW if you need more info on the modification, let me know and I can try to look it up. I think it was a post on machinegunboard forum.