Is This A Botched Attempt To Acid Etch My Model 101 ??|Winchester Shotguns|Forum|Winchester Collector

The Olin-Kodensha factory was never known for slopping acid around like that.  The blushes and blooms on the barrel were never near the nitride finished parts when the latter were etched and engraved. You will note that no blued components of the gun are engraved.

Bert has identified two very possible causes for the corrosion,  sweaty or bloody hands.  These can certainly result in virtually irreversible corrosion of the steel. 

I have a slightly different theory based on my own experience. The blooms on the barrels are familiar. Decades ago when moving into a new house, I left a cased long barreled, nickel plated Colt SAA in the trunk of my car in November overnight and then brought it into the house, still cased, for a couple of weeks. Fortunately, the blushes had not fully gotten through the plating and hours of jewelers paste saved the finish, although the copper underplate made the nickel a little yellow in certain lights. 

But the pattern and distribution of the condensation was burned into my brain.

I propose this gun was put up into a soft case when the gun was very cold and then the cased gun left in a horizontal position in a warm room for an extended period — weeks or more, not hours or even a couple of days. Warm atmospheric water condensed on the steel in beads, which pooled and was held in the crevices of the engraving patterns, which then served as a reservoir to keep the air in the case humid enough to serve as a rust box. 

I note that the bottom plate of the receiver is almost undamaged, even though it is at the point of carry, arguing against sweat or blood as the vector.

Also, the engraved, nitride plated cheeks have borne the worst of the damage, one face seemingly much worse than the other. We don’t have a view of the top or bottom tang but the damage overall seems positional: If the bottom tang and trigger guard and lowest quadrant of the lower barrel are relatively unscathed, I think we could conclude gravity and resting position caused the distribution of the condensed water, with the upmost  engraved cheek suffering the worst.

A careful craftsman could re-blue the barrels and preserve the marks.  It wouldn’t be cheap if the barrels and rib are soldered on.

But the problem with plating is mostly what you are up against.  Once it’s breached you can’t spot repair it. The only way I know to remove plating is polish it off, which blurs or removes the engraving. If there is a chemical process to.remove the plating, I’ve never heard of it, although I’m no expert.

I once owned a 12 gauge 101 PG Lightweight just like yours, if yours has Winchoke tubes. Mine was in excellent condition, complete with original cardboard, paper, and factory hard case. It sold at GB auction in the mid two thousands in a bidding war, a decade ago. I mention this not to brag but to say the cost of an excellent restoration likely isn’t practical. 

I think there are two possibilities. 

Assuming the damage is purely cosmetic and the internal parts  were unaffected — an open question if condensation was the cause of the damage — you can hunt with it. The 101 is a very fine shotgun,  well balanced in a 12 gauge and a hell of a pheasant gun. The single, selectable trigger is reliable and the ejectors work fine if not rusted. 

My concern will be familiar to aviators who worry about water in their avgas. If the wing tanks are not topped off, the condensation dripping off the top outside surface of the wings is doing the same thing inside the tanks. Which can kill you very dead. 

Whether you are going to keep the gun or not, have it competently disassembled and examined. If there’s significant corrosion that would allow the gun to jar off – at worst, or malfunction, consider parting it out to recover some of what you’ve got in it. If it is not safe, don’t auction it. Period. 

If it is safe and fully functional and I were auctioning it, I would do these things:

1. Shine it up with Ren wax and photograph it minutely in good light, fine checkering as well as corrosion. Show everything you would want to see if you were considering a bid. 30 images at minimum.

2. With a friend who can handle a camera, go shoot a round of trap or Skeet and photograph how well it shoots. 

3. With all due respect for Tony’s Worldly wisdom and good intentions,  make full disclosure in the description, both of the good stuff and the cosmetic bad. You do not want to deal with an angry buyer who gnawed his bidding hand off after he opened the box your soiled angel arrived in. 

4. Do not start the bidding at a penny because that is what you might get. This is going to take some time and several auction cycles.  Do not set a Buy It Now price. Start and stay with what you have in it, unless you were temporarily insane and paid so much you deserve punishment. Whatever you decide, DON’T start reducing it after the first auction cycle with no bids. Be patient..

5. In all events, you may join our “Sadder but Wiser” club by branding our logo in your non-dextrous hand:

“Condition. Condition. Condition.”

Just my thoughts.