Looks bad.

That may or may not be salt wood, check the metal on the action and barrel, that will tell the story....

What I see in the picture is an abused rifle and that old Browning finish, like some Weatherbys is a dipped in a vat finish thats very thick and tends to craze and then break and fracture apart...I believe I see the rust in the swivel but with a stock in that condition rusty swivels are expected....

BillMc. I would guess that is a Sako Deluxe stock and not the Browning. From the picture it appears the stock was stood up in a corner of a flooded room. The effects shown in the picture have nothing to do with salt wood.

Bill,
I am with Jimmy on that. I have a salt wood stock here and the finish is excellent. That looks like water damage.

I've seen a lot of the salt wood stocks on Brownings and some Sakos, all of them had good finish on the wood. I don't think this has anything to do with salt wood. If one had been well cared for, you would just see a line where the boundary between wood and metal was, below the stock line would be considerable rust.

Gotcha guys! (Bill posted the pic as a favor until I get hosting to work....)



It was indeed a salt-wood Browning (from a Belgium Medallion-grade .243) that has never seen a drop of water from the day my uncle bought it NIB to this day.



After a period of long storage, I noticed rust at the back of the tang, along top of barrel channel, and at the swivel base along with a slight blistering at the buttplate and pulled the action.



Indeed, since then it has not been lavishly cared for; rather more like kicked around under a worktable for 15 years. The wood has swollen outside the buttplate and most of the rust on the sling swivel has occurred since then. The blistering that was so slight at discovery has progressed (no doubt from continued exposure to moist air) to what you see now. The barrelled action is somewhere around here in grease.



This along with two Superposeds and a T-bolt are my only personal experiences with salt wood. This and the T-bolt are the only ones that began to blister at the buttplate. The tang tips and on the O/Us the receiver sides seem to have rusted first which indicates to me it may be the endgrain exudes the heaviest salt concentrations though the barrel generally will rust shortly thereafter at contact points.



Interestingly, to this day that bare wood tastes salty as sweat.