I have a turkey edition browning gold 10 gauge. I bought new. Think it was maybe around 96 or 97? I remember I bought the original 30 inch gold stalker when it first came out in 10 gauge and traded it the next year or year and a half for the light 30” version. Then I traded it in for the turkey edition and it had ever since. I put a saddle on it at the time and a red dot. The year before last when I was sighting it in and changing optics to a Holosun green dot with the shake and wake feature I had a bunch of white plastic pieces shattering and came out of the action. The bolt handle flew out as well. Itended up being The white plastic spring follower that shattered. Must’ve shifted the optic saddle mount from the vibration. Bolt handle hit on the optic saddle and flew out. Replaced the plastic follower and never replaced the red colored buffer because it looked good at the time. After replacing the bolt handle having it come out a few times, and luckily finding it, I realized it was hitting on the saddle. I made the action slot in the optic saddle wider. It took care of the handle flying out when shooting. So yesterday, I took it out hunting after giving it a thorough cleaning. The bolt shut closed, but the follower stayed open about 3/4 of an inch. I lubed in between those joints and worked it back-and-forth quite a bit and it got better. I did notice there is a gouge right at the end of the receivers where the barrel meets up to so something funky happened at one point a time. I don’t see that being the issue though. When I take it apart, I will lightly file it smooth and put some Oxpho blue on it to see if there’s any rubbing. So when I got home from hunting yesterday and not using that gun and luckily, I had another another one with me. Took the barrel out and found little pieces of dull red plastic that I would assume was the buffer. The slide will completely shut if there is no ammo in the gun as intended. I also cleaned out the magazine tube in case there was loose buffer in it…which was my guess because the shells I use didn’t lose any buffer. I did feel some grit and debris when cleaning out the magazine tube. I also noticed there were a little red pieces of plastic that came out of my action so that tells me the buffer is shattering. It looked fine when I replaced the follower and took it all apart last year and I didn’t want to spend the extra 55 bucks versus five dollars for just the buffer…that I couldn’t find at the time. The buffer itself, used to cost $3/$5, when available. It’s now been Discontinued and now only offered in a complete assembly…and their back ordered at Browning. I found one in stock at Midwest gun Works and got it ordered up. Just wondering if anybody had some extra buffers (without the plate) they would part with? it use to cost approximately 11 buffers for the price of the complete assembly. Makes zero sense why browning offers it only with the metal plate (that never fails) now. It’d be nice to have one or two extra on hand for my gun. This is what they look like if anybody knows of anybody that has a few extras laying around the part with.
what it was doing…
This is what a shell looked like after working the action back and forth trying to get the bolt work properly in the field after spraying some Rem oil on the bolt group and action. I didn’t realize the buffer was coming apart at the time and thought that maybe there was a burr or it was gummed up so I just kept working it back-and-forth until it started shutting by itself 99% of the time.
No, that gun doesn’t kick very much at all. My lightweight Beretta semi automatics kick way harder with 12 gauge 3 inch loads. The cheaper 10 gauge pump versions will beat you up after a box or two of ammo. I’ve owned this gun since new. Never had any issues with it up until the plastic follower shattered a couple seasons ago. Apparently the buffer was right behind it and I didn’t realize it.
Yes, they quit offering the buffer by itself four years ago. It’s only available ( but on a month back order currently) with the metal plate that it’s pressed into one for $46 plus shipping and tax for a total of $55…Exact same price I just paid at Midwest gun works. Just would like to see if anyone or anywhere had the discontinued $3/$5 plastic buffer still in stock. If so I’d buy a few to keep on hand.
Looks like Browning discontinued the 10 gauge line up for 2024’. They did this a few years back as well and then came back out with them. They were the only 10 gauge production guns left on the market. Just started reloading 10 gauge a few years back because I wanted some 1 5/8oz 2 7/8” turkey loads for my 1873 Charles Daly SxS. I’ll have to start looking for more 10 gauge hulls. They are hard to find for me.
Finally tore it down today since my first season turkey hunting is over. I have a couple weeks till I go back out again for fourth season. The buffer definitely grenaded! Also I found one of the pins that hold the side plate on the trigger housing sheared off for sone goofy reason. When I slid the trigger group out the side plate on the right hand side fell off on the floor. I even found the “male nub” on the floor by it. Curious why that broke? Called Browning to see if they had a trigger guard group. They said they wouldn’t sell me one for liability reasons and I needed to take it to a gunsmith. I’m sure I can take that thing apart and reassemble it in my sleep and my buddy is a gunsmith if I can’t. So since they told me, they wouldn’t sell me one I went and got some JB weld and cleaned up the area and glued that pin back in place since it literally would sit tight in the area where it snapped off. While it was drying I went on numeric gun parts and saw the trigger housing for 66 bucks. So I called Browning back and told them I could buy one directly from numerics if they didn’t want to sell me one. I got a different guy on the phone this time from browning who was actually nice and never even bad in an eye and sold me the housing which was $56. I also bought another recoil spring follower for $5 to keep on hand. I tell you it all depends on who you get at browning. I’ve had that on and off when I was calling two years ago for parts. One guy that works there must just hate his job. I called back and got a girl that day and she actually helped me out and gave me the parts! It was the same rotten guy. I got last time that I got this morning. The second guy I talked to when I called back was super nice. Apparently Browning firearms have a five year warranty. Never really knew because I’ve never had to use a warranty with them and just bought wear and tear parts last couple times which where the buffer for a pistol and the follower for my 10 gauge. At least I have a new housing coming.
Broken pin
After JB welded it. I’ll keep the housing for a back up i guess…
Buffer…what’s left of it…lol…in my action and trigger group…
Yeah….after I called Browning back I was going to raise hell if they didn’t sell me the trigger frame since I could one off Numerics. I’d rather buy one directly from the manufacturer so you know what you’re getting. With numerics a lot of times I’ll get used parts that say they’re new. I figured the JV well the last for a while but who knows how long and I didn’t feel like having it fail in the field. I’ll just keep that part as an emergency back up That I’ll probably never use.
So it’s all back together now. Replaced the recoil follower with the new one just because it was kind of about around… looks like it kind of took a beating with everything else going on in there, even though it was only two years old, so I’ll save it for a spare along with the old repaired trigger guard. New buffer in place as well. I even cleaned inside the two gas ports in the barrel which I’ve never done before since I’ve owned it. The right side had a little buildup, but the left side was good to go. Put it all back together and grabbed one of the federal shells that was keeping the bolt open about 3/4 of an inch. I grabbed another one out of the box and assisted it in to the chamber and it stayed open worse than before! So I grabbed one of my reloads that I sized the brass and it slid right in! The old federal grand slam shells were/are the issue with the bolt carrier not shutting. If I load one from the magazine and let the bolt go when it’s all the way back it will slam shut and resize the brass hull. So it was the ammo causing the bolt carrier to stay open and not the buffer or broken trigger guard pin. I’ll resize the old grand slams in my sizing ring and shoot them. Think I only have around 7 left or so.
Here is the one I tried to load today, testing it after it was all back together. You can see the brass getting resized in the process and the indentations on the face of the hull getting indented from the force of doing so.
The old follower is on the right. I just don’t like the way it looked out around even though it’s only had about a dozen or two dozen shots through it so I put a new one in just to be on the safe side.
Back up and running smooth. only had six of those Federal Grand slam shells left. I ended up polishing the brass on them when I reloaded a dozen test rounds to re zero my holosun 403G. The Federals lock right up after polishing the brass hulls with mothers for a few seconds each. I burn them up hunting.
