Winchester Model 1911

The Model 1911 SL (for "Self-Loading") shotgun was developed in 1911 by Thomas Crossley Johnson for the Winchester Repeating Arms Corporation. At the time, Winchester lacked an autoloading shotgun in its product offering, since the company had not accepted John Browning's conditions (he wanted to be paid on a royalty basis, without giving up his rights) for taking his 1898 autoloading design in production. The weapon rejected by Winchester was to become the Browning Auto-5 shotgun (also license-built as the Remington Model 11 and the Savage 720), and set the standard for autoloading shotgun designs until after World War II. Due to patent restrictions on the 1898 design, Winchester was unable to copy the Browning design they had rejected earlier, the only autoloading shotgun design at the time, so Winchester had to adapt the design for their own production without infringing on Browning's patents; T.C. Johnson, reportedly, joked that "it took him nearly ten years to design an automatic shotgun (the Winchester 1911) which would not be an infringement on the Browning gun." One of Browning's patents was for the charging handle on the bolt of the 1905 shotgun which disconnected the bolt from the barrel; Winchester worked around this restriction by buying an early production Auto-5 from Browning and literally adding ribs to the barrel so it could be used to charge the weapon. In order to use the 1911 SL, a user would place the gun on safe, point the firearm in a safe direction, load the tubular magazine, and then pull back on the barrel by the checkered section. After disengaging the safety, the weapon was ready to fire. The stock can be laminated with 3 separate lengthwise pieces glued together.