Now when the 410 arrives monday if it's salt free as well there just may be a God :rotf:

When were the guns made? Are they from the Salt era?

Excuse my ignorance. What is salt wood?
BillK

In the late '60's ( most folks say 1968), Browning was having a hard time finding sufficient cured, dried wood for stocks.. They tried a process that soaked blanks in a salt solution which was designed to draw water out of the blanks. After a few years the residual salts in the stocks began to rust the metal in the guns. Most folks think the period was from 1968 to 1971. If you Google "Browning Salt Wood" there is lots of info.

Just unscrew the buttpad. If the screws are rusty it's a salt wood gun. Nice gun.

Nope , usually the screws are stainless and won't show it ! Well provided the gun has a recoil pad as do the two I bought .

However the screw inside the stock into the tang is a good one for that .

My retired pharmacist friend however has a solution that when put on a small spot of wood without finish it will turn milky in about 10-20 seconds if there's salt present in the wood .

Both this 28 and the 410 I have coming today (Monday the31st) are serial numbered for 1970 . As is my 12 gauge Mag Superposed well 1969 actually . Anyway any time I get or am thinking of getting a Browning be it shotgun rifle or handgun I get this guy to check them out . He was into Brownings in a big way so I trust his judgement .

FWIW , I wasn't aware of it until a few months ago , but Ruger used the same process in approx. the same time period . Seems you can find some #1's with the same issue . Ive had a couple dozen of them and to date I've not been aware of any that had the problem . But I will say of the 18 of them I had two years ago I'm down to maybe 7 now .

A guy showed up at one of our 5-stand shoots a while back with a Browning Superposed that certainly had to be a salt era gun. Every place wood touched metal, the stock head, the forearm along the barrels etc., the metal was corroded. Who knows what it looked like inside. While I am not a Superposed fan I did notice this gun was absent the forearm cross bolt and had instead a Citori style forearm latch. Just thought it interesting for I assumed all had the cross bolt.

My 12 gauge , this 28 and the 410 I have coming have the beavertail forend that the Citori's seem to be patterned afte and those three have no crossbolt . My 20 gauge skeet if my memory serves does have the crossbolt as well as my 20 gauge field and 12 gauge magnum . But the latch on all of them are the expected Superposed drop latch and the forend slides forward .

It's incorrect actually to say these guns have a Citori style forend as they were made 5 or so years before the Citori was unvieled in the mid 70's .

My Browning ownership is limited to the Citori, however, my understanding about the salt guns is the higher grade guns are the ones you need to be careful of. Great dove guns. I hope you get to use them soon.