Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Any idea what caused this?

This area of discoloration is on a 1976 Browning A5 light 20.
It is a plumb color and is difficult to see unless the light and angle is just right. I didn't see it until a few days after I bought the gun. The gun is otherwise almost perfect. Any idea what caused this? One opinion is that it got out of the factory like that, which I doubt. Thanks, Ken

Looks to me like someone reblued it and that area got a bit too hot.

I've seen blood do that to a rifle barrel.

Yep...me too. My guess would be a bloody hand wrapped around the barrel in the field. Didn't clean it off soon enough.

From what I understand, it can be caused by a poor bluing job . Contamination, or shortchanged in the bath...not sure though.

This.

That looks a little too evenly discolored to be from blood I'd think

I agree, one of my old Remmington 40XB was purple like that and blood didn't change the colouring on it at all.

I've seen a lot of bluing go purple over time. I always thought it was more a luck of the draw thing or just natural, at least with bluing going back a ways. Blood left unwiped and cleaned off, seems to darn near remove bluing rather than making it go purple. Got a couple near bare spots like that on an old 1965 870, my first "owned" shotgun.

Could have been some contamination on the barrel when it was dropped in the bluing tank that caused the discoloration.

YUP..

When I had a custom Blackhawk done, the 'smith told me that the loading gate would eventually turn purple. The reason, he said, is that that piece is made of extremely hard steel.

So different tempering/heat application/hardness is probably the cause here, also.