My wife bought me a Encore 209x50 rifle ML barrel for Christmas in stainless. All my other Encore barrels in centerfire
rounds are 100% stainless/silver finish. My new 209x50 has the barrel lug blued and the forearm posts are blued also. If you look in the TC catalogs they show the barrel lug and forearms posts in stainless/silver finish. Does anyone else out their have this same type off barrel finish.
I called TC and they said the barrel lug steel was not stainless and it used to be bead blasted to match the rest of the stainless barrel finish. They found out some guys like to soak the ML barrels in water from time to time so they started blueing the barrel lug instead of bead blasting since it was not true stainless steel, this would keep it from rusting better than the bead blasting. They only do this this on the ML 209 barrels.
I thought I got the one in a million where someone welded the wrong finished barrel lug to the stainless barrel. Do others out
there have barrels like mine or is mine truly a one in million mistake? I want to make sure TC is not feeding me a bunch of BS just to get me off the phone. I also have the 15" 209x50 on order from Fox Ridge Custom Shop and TC said that will more than likely come with a blued barrel lug. Thanks for your time.
