There is no deep dark secret to it. Recently I bought a excellent s&w model 36 3" blue. I received it with all tools, in the unopened plastic bag paperwork etc. I am positive it was unfired after it left the factory without any blem or whatever. The gun looks like it was made yesterday and is about 35 years old. I doubt if anyone wiped it down with oil before I got it. The point is I belive if you buy a new gun in the box and set it away where there is no humidity it will look new in the box 200 years from now!
Now if you own a shooting gun and are carefull to just wipe it down with a oily rag and put it away, it will stay that way. Humidity, handeling a gun with leaveing fingerprints will affect it. I have guns close to a hundred years old or more, family guns dad bought in the 1930s that show only handling wear. NO rust! Dad lost a car ice fishing around 1960. It sat in the lake under the ice for close to one or two weeks. He had a remington pump shotgun in it. When we did get the car out dad cleaned the shotgun that night, probley with hot water as I seen him do many times, dry and oil it. Dad bought that one in the 1930s and hunted heavy with it his entire life. I inherited it. It only shows normal "use" wear from hunting and handeling all those years and not a speck of rust!
I once lent a friend a shotgun for a few days and he lived near the ocean. He brought it back and it was already starting to rust everyplace he touched it! And him a ex world war two marine at that!! (one of the few liberals I ever knew).
I have guns I bought when I was a kid in the 50s that I hunted with in rain and snow. NONE have rust! I have always been carefull to just wipe then down with a oily rag after handling them and that is about all! I DO NOT make a religion of always cleaning the bore immediately after useing them. That is contraie to what many here will tell you! I have owned hundreds of guns and you never will find any rust on one that came from me unless it was there prior to me owning it! Some people do seem to have more acid, salt or whatever in their system and have to seem to clean up guns more carefully then others.
