The Browning Trombone was a pump-action rifle made by FN Herstal for more than 50 years. It is somewhat rare now and is considered a collector piece and sold for top dollar. This one, however, was relatively inexpensive, because it came in pieces, the parts numbers are not matching, and the receiver is in relatively poor shape. So my job is to clean and polish everything, reblue it and make it look like new.

I started with the receiver. I repaired all the dents the best I could, sanded everything down to 240 grit and prepared for bluing.

Next I put the barrel between the centers on my lathe and hit it with various grits of sandpaper. I did not want it to look like new, and, of course, I didn’t want to remove the original factory markings on the barrel, there’s no way to restamp them, so I had to leave some pitting there.

I did polish the magazine plunger though, and made sure it goes all the way into the magazine tube. Of course, being made from brass, it got scratched immediately.

All parts were blued using the Art’s (formerly Herter’s) Belgian Blue (which is very appropriate given the gun is made by FN). Despite being called “cold blue” it is actually a rust blue process which requires boiling parts in distilled water, applying the chemical, boiling again and carding off with a carding wheel.

And here is the final result. It is not perfect, there are some fitment issues between the receiver and the trigger group, but it is functional and looks pretty decent.