leather horse scabbords and truck guns.

In previous threads I have asked for advice about truck guns and rust when kept in leather horse scabbords. Well I think I may have found a cure......I keep a 30-30 in the truck that gets very minimal maintenance also a marlin 60. Both are kept in leather, the marlin scabbord has several years of horse sweat and never has caused the rifle to rust. The 30-30 scabbord was rusting my rifle in a month or so.

Both these guns were aquired in pretty poor condition so they make ideal truck guns but I would prefer to keep new rust from forming.

I took the scabbord for the 30-30 and used western boot dressing inside and out, I also used lucas gun oil on the rifle. It has gone 6 months with no problem. Does leather suck up moisture.....YES, but not if you quench it's thirst every now and again:)

I looked up tanning and found this

http://www.leathernet.com/tanning.htm

While reading this doesn't make anyone an expert (including me), it does show how many chemicals can be involved in making leather.

I'll bet the various unhairing agents are hard to remove completely, and that those chemicals, in conjunction with moisture, probably cause steel in contact with the leather to rust more rapidly than the steel would if just exposed to the moisture alone.

So, anything that tends to exclude water from the leather, like leather conditioners might, should slow this process.

And some leather might be worse than others depending on what processes were used in its manufacture.

I used to carry my Savage 110L in a scabbard on the right side jury struts of my Supercub. It rode out there in snow, rain and shine. Never had a problem with rust. I did take it out of the scabbard and into my house when the plane was tied down but didn't baby it any. The rifle never failed me on moose and caribou as well as backing up hunters. I wouldn't want to keep a gun in a leather case or holster all the time, my .44mag shells used to get a bit green once in a while and need a scrub on my gun belt.