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Art is a Charter/life Member of the BCA and has been a member
of the Board of Directors since 1980. He is a twice past employee
of Browning at its repair facility in Arnold, Missouri, where
he worked as a gunsmith and a supervisor. Art has professionally
restored Browning firearms, as well as other quality arms, for
35 years. He owns Art’s Gun Shop in Hillsboro, Missouri.
After
a four year stint in the U.S. Navy, I decided to enroll in a gunsmithing
school in Colorado so I could expand on my machinist back-ground.
At the end of a two-year program the Browning Company sent a representative
to interview for some gunsmithing positions that had opened with
the company. After interviewing with Mr. Stengel, I was invited
to come I to St. Louis and become one of the gunsmiths for Browning.
In 1971, I packed all of my humble belongings in a U-Haul trailer
and headed for St. Louis and thus began an exciting career with
Browning that would last over 30 years.
The
very first day of my training in the gunshop introduced me to
something that I had never heard of. It was referred to as the
salt wood situation. As the new kid on the block, I was enlightened
in a rapid manner. Seems that I would be one of the men who would
be repairing some firearms that had a strange rusting condition.
It was generally where the wood and metal were mated together.
Some guns had a few rust spots in various locations while others
had a very severe case of rusting that left very deep pitting
in the metal. My assignment was to work on the Safari rifles and
one of the latest .22 rifles to be added into the Browning line
called the T-Bolt. I was shown many other guns with the same problem.
The Superposed shotguns had been fit with this “bad wood” and
many of them were in serious need of help. I was soon being instructed
about a bad situation at Browning. Seems the company had bought
some wood and sent it to Belgium to be made into gunstocks and
it had been cured by a new process that was referred to as salt
curing. The wood had been purchased mainly from a California company
but some of it came out of Missouri. Yes, in the early 70’s, Browning
was locked into a serious situation in which they recognized that
they were in a very costly and long lasting situation in which
they were obligated to repair thousands of Browning guns that
had been fit with salt wood. How could something like this happen
we ask? Why hadn’t anyone considered this potential problem? Well,
as I dove into my first salt gun repair, the situation was explained
to me.
Browning
was enjoying great sales in the 60’s and they were supplying wood
to the FN plant in Belgium as we had a ready supply of it here
in the states. The problem was they could not supply enough to
meet the demand. The tried and proven method of curing wood was
with kiln drying. It removed the right amount of moisture which
seasoned the wood and made it useful as a gun stock. The wood
was put in large kilns and would remain there for several months
to get the moisture content to the desired level. The bottom line
was that it worked well, but it just took too long and thus the
gun manufacturing process was being held up while waiting for
the wood to dry. A new process was being introduced in the country
by which wood could have salt packed around it and thus the moisture
would quickly be removed and the wood was ready to be sent to
Belgium. As old Browning retiree recently informed me that one
of his jobs was to go out into the field and locate cured gunstock
blanks. He visited with a supplier in California and Missouri
and he was taken on a tour of these facilities. He told me how
surprised he was to see pallets of wood blanks stacked high, and
amazingly enough they had salt packed between each layer of blanks.
Water was running from the blanks as moisture was being pulled
from the wood. The suppliers informed him that this greatly accelerated
the curing process and they could supply as many of these blanks
as was need. It seemed harmless enough. Deals were made and soon
many blanks of wood were on the way to the plant at FN. Production
increased and everyone was happy but trouble was around the corner.
This salt curing process began in 1966 and continued until around
1971. In those few short years thousands of Browning’s were fit
with salt cured wood. Now, I didn’t say they all were, but a good
many were. It wasn’t too long after the salt wood installation
process began, when a few guns started appearing in the repair
shop and then it became a full-fledged epidemic as they began
to pour into the St. Louis repair facility. When I arrived in
1971, there was no shortage of work in the gun shop. I guess I
should have been grateful for this situation as it gave me and
some other men a good job, but those poor souls who owned these
guns had my sympathy. Damaged guns were always repaired at no
charge, but the owners were without a gun for a long period of
time. Browning was really in a financial pinch over the situation
and it would dog them for years to come and still does to this
day. Many guns would have to be replaced as they were just too
far gone for repair. Replacing Olympians, Medallions, Midas, Diana
grades, and everything in between was a terribly costly situation
for Browning. Thousands of man hours were spent on the repair
of salt guns.
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