Hawken, polish the brass?

E

exophysical

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Just wondering what you guys think. I've polished the brass furniture on my Hawken a few times, but I've come to see it as a working gun and am considering just letting the brass tarnish and aquire a patina. My Hawken is in decent shape, but has obviously seen some use, its going to be seeing a whole lot more use in the future too... I'm wondering whether putting too much effort into keeping it shiny is practical and/or worthwhile?
 
Historically, users did everything possible to dull the brass. Shiny things scare game and bring Indian war parties. Urine was commonly rubbed on the brass to blacken. The best X pensive guns I have seen black brass with slight shiny edges and high spots.
 
Most of the Hawken shooters I know have browned steel furniture on their rifles. Traditional.

My Uberti '66 and Henry get pretty grungy looking after a season of BP loads. I start out every year with them bright and shiny, but that's just the old soldier in me. They look just plain sad otherwise. I don't let my blued guns go to hell either, so why them?

I doubt very much that in the era, they were kept bright for the reasons mentioned above. An exception would be the Brown Bess muskets (and other military muskets) which were kept bright. Even so, eventually they acquired the patina that gave them their nickname.
 
I have a similar flint rifle and lots of cap and ball revolvers with brass and have never polished any of them, just don't see any reason to..they look great as is.
 
Let the brass tarnish and get its patina naturally. This would be identical to the way it was back in the 18th century. Very few people had the resources or time to polish the brass on their rifles or smoothores back then. I just let mine all tarnish naturally....IMO natural tarnish looks better than artificially blacken.
 
Keeping the brass bits oiled the same as you would for blued or browned steel slows down the tarnishing and seems to allow it to achieve a deeper and nicer sort of tarnish. After a while the variations from handling and oiling give the brass a sort of colour case hardened look in various tones of brown and dull gold. So simply ignore it other than the normal oily rag now and then and in a year or so it'll look fantastic.
 
Don't have to worry about ''hostiles'' seeing the sun reflect off the brass anymore....... I just polish the brass with ''Mothers'' mag polish on my b.p.rifles .I keep my trucks clean too ...lol
 
A true "Hawken" rifle had no brass furniture.

I know Thompson-Center and various Italian makers offer something they call a Hawken, all tarted up with shiny brass gewgaws and such, but a Hawken rifle looks like this -

Hawken001.jpg


If anything, to make it look as much as possible like the original rifles the manufacturer was purporting to emulate by applying that name, you should blacken the brass as Hunstman did!
 
I'd polish it with Brasso so it looked like the day it was made. Thats original to me, tarnished looks neglected in my mind.
 
plinker 777 said:
All browned steel GrantR? (Beautiful furniture btw)
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Yes, completely. The barrel is .62 cal. and 1 1/8" across the flats, by the way, so this piece is a mite heavy .... although it does fit me nicely (I am 6' 4" tall and no lightweight myself .... ;) ). Despite the barrel weight (or perhaps because of it) the rifle balances surprisingly well and "holds" quite steady, although I definitely wouldn't want to pack it around in the mountains all day .... unless rested across a saddle pommel!
 
One doesn't polish browned steel furniture with Brasso. It's browned for a reason.

There is a difference between authenticity and neglect. A nicely aged patina adds to the cachet of a good rifle. Some guys think nothing of taking a steel brush to an old rifle. That's neglect and abuse.

Magellann said:
I'd polish it with Brasso so it looked like the day it was made. Thats original to me, tarnished looks neglected in my mind.
Click to expand...
 
The Browning Mountain Rifle differed in several small aspects from a true "Hawken" .... notably the reduced powder chamber and the nice but non-authentic ram's horn curl around the nipple area. The lock and trigger mechanism were also non-traditional. The rifle was not a commercial success in it's era and soon dropped by Browning.
 
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