doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DIY Gunsmithing @ doublegunshop.com Salt Wood

What series Belgian Mfg'd. models were affected by this Fuvar- aprox. what time frame. I am looking at 2 Belgian A-5 Lighttwelves-LTRK VR barrels-- any risk with those models?? RWTF

Browning salt wood years were 1966-71.

So, all the Belgian mfg. Brownings made in that time frame could have salt infected stocks?RWTF

Mostly high grade guns (stocks) but could be any of them.
Here's a good explanation of what happened.

https://shotgunreport.com/2013/05/22/browning-salt-wood-explained/

There are also some fancy salt wood blanks floating around . Bobby

If the gun isn't rusted where the wood meets metal, you should be OK. It has been 50 years, if the gun has salt wood it has rusted by now.

I had that problem on a Ruger Number 1 from 1976. I always figured it was a bluing salts problem coming from the metal but maybe they ended up with some of that wood and it was coming from the wood.

Ruger did get in on some salt cured wood as did Winchester.
W/O testing the wood blanks for it, you really can't tell just by looking at the stuff.
It's not that it' was a new (at time) discovery for how to quickly cure the wood. The furniture industry and others had been using it for a long time..
Some other pre WW2 European guns from smaller makers will show up with the nasty rust pitting under the wood line as well,,all due to salt cured wood.

I restocked a nice 20 ga sterlingworth a few years back and had to throw the fancy crotch stock away after all that work! I also restocked a sterlingworth 20 for my son in fancy crotch blank and now cannot remove top tang screw and there is evidence of rust in several spots on tangs! Bobby

There was a superposed for sale on GA a few months ago that had beautifully figured wood. Unfortunately, the rear of the action looked like the wheel wells of an old car in a place that salts the road. Beautiful wood, fine gun, both ruined by haste.

Bobby, I don't know if there's a way to test wood blanks for salt, but there should be. A man shouldn't have to use a Fox as a test medium.

Use a soln of silver nitrate (a 1% to 1.5% soln works well) to test for salt in the wood. This Silver Nitrate & Water soln will be Purple in color.
Place a couple drops of the soln onto a spot on the wood where you have freshly scraped the surface so the soln can react with the clean wood.

If the spot stays Purple,,there is NO salt in the wood.
If the soln turns White,,there is salt in the wood.

Here's some pics of a German DR 9.3x72R from the '20's.
The effects of it being (IMO) originally stocked with salt cured wood.
The heavy moon crater pitting under the wood line,,everwhere wood & metal contact was made. The forend iron and trigger guard included.
The rifle had since been restocked in a very plain straight grain piece of wood,,but no additional rusting .

But,,Then someone decided to practice refinishing techniques on the gun and heavily soft wheel buffed and hot blued the entire thing.
A good project. The exc bores and the Leopold Alaskan in claw mounts made the deal even better.

Action and parts have been annealed and acid pickled cleaned of any heat scale in the pics.

I thought it was a little earlier than 1966....I've came across a Browning T Bolt (plain un-checkered stock), a Browning Safari High powered rifle in 7 mag, a Browning Superposed and a Browning .243 win. with a Sako Action with bad salt wood. Never saw an A5 with salt wood.

Some were worse than others...best pull the butt plate screws and look anywhere the wood meets the metal.

Very low risk for A5’s. As a side note, I once owned a beautiful Model 12 trap pigeon grade, factory engraved with A-carved wood that was salty (a 1,900,xxx gun). Talk about sickening. So, I’ll testify, it wasn’t just the Browning guns so plagued.