A customer brought 12 shotguns in for storage the other week.

He stored them in his basement, in his gun safes.

But.........his wife also had her tumble drier in the basement, without an outlet for the hose.

Well the upshot is he hadn't looked at the guns for over a year, & when he did, he found they were v-e-r-y s-l-i-g-h-t-l-y tarnished.


Rusty barrels.


Close up of barrels.


Least damaged gun is the Beretta o/u on the right.


Can you guess what the Side lock in the middle with no fore grip is ?. Yup its a Holland & Holland !. Bordering on Sacrilege !.


Out of 12 guns, 8 of them fairly cheap ones & not worth trying to save, so are pretty much scrap & will go to auction. The bores weren't effected too much on any of them, but as for the locks ?. Who knows.

It's not smart being puerile and irresponsible.

I would think if the bores were mostly unaffected, the locks would have escaped most of the damage as well. Looks like simple surface condensation. The H&H looks to be salvageable. Personally, I'd make an effort on the SxS with external hammers (Manton, maybe?). I'd be experimenting with "rust repair" techniques on the 'scrap' ones. It's a shame, but a lesson learned and one to be taken note of.

Paul

A lot of the rust spots look deep & quite a bit more than just on the surface.

Most of the bad spots look like they could be from finger marks where the guns have been handled.
So maybe the locks were quite well protected with oil/lube, the same as the bores seem to have been.

I don't know if the guys going to attempt restoring them himself, I should think the H & H is maybe best trusted to a professional, but that will cost.
That's if the for-end can be found. Seems he's lost it/hidden it, & has no idea where it is !.