GUCCC - wartime colours?

[c c]

Since the incident at Welford in February when a BW contractor's vehicle blasted Badsey with hydraulic fluid, and took most of the paint off of the cabin, we have been trying to settle the matter with their insurers. NFU Mutual are playing all the usual insurance ploys to delay payment but we are now so fed up at seeing the boat looking very sad in its temporary paint, not to mention the deterioration, that we have decided to wait no longer. We have booked it in for the long awaited paint job. Every time I see a Woolwich in wartime austerity maroon and dark blue, it is a difference shade ranging from a bright maroon to drab pinky-red. We can imagine that working through a war, the bright colours faded to the drab.

So we still need to decide the answer to our questions :

What is the name of a suitable maroon and dark blue for the final coats?

Which brand sells each of them?

Should we finish with a coat of varnish or not?

 

Any advice please.

[NB Alnwick]

Probably a question for Phil Speight - you could try sending him a PM

[dave moore]

Hi

Phil will doubtless have the answer to wartime utility colours. As far as varnishing over is concerned, it depends on how you look after it subsequently. Many of my customers have asked me the same question over many years and my reply has always been "it's like marriage, not to undertaken lightly/ irresponsibly etc and you need a committment to maintain it" etc etc

 

Varnising will preserve a paint job almost indefinitely, as long as you can live with the yellowing that repeated coats will provide. If you go down that road you need to be vigilant and touch up any scratches as they happen, keep the panel clean and be prepared to apply a fresh coat annually. I've seen so many varnished panels where moisture ingress has led to lifting/ crazing due to scratches that are not touched in and an eqal number of tired crazed panels where extra coats have not been applied. If you are happy to keep on top of it, then varnish...otherwise, polish regularly after 3 months from the repaint.

Hope this helps

Dave

[LEO]

Since the incident at Welford in February when a BW contractor's vehicle blasted Badsey with hydraulic fluid, and took most of the paint off of the cabin, we have been trying to settle the matter with their insurers. NFU Mutual are playing all the usual insurance ploys to delay payment but we are now so fed up at seeing the boat looking very sad in its temporary paint, not to mention the deterioration, that we have decided to wait no longer. We have booked it in for the long awaited paint job. Every time I see a Woolwich in wartime austerity maroon and dark blue, it is a difference shade ranging from a bright maroon to drab pinky-red. We can imagine that working through a war, the bright colours faded to the drab.

So we still need to decide the answer to our questions :

What is the name of a suitable maroon and dark blue for the final coats?

Which brand sells each of them?

Should we finish with a coat of varnish or not?

 

Any advice please.

 

Hi,

 

Any probs with the insurers - write to the MD, outlining your problems, indicate unless the matter is settled within say 2 weeks you will write to the insurance Ombudsman, If no action write to him and invoke complaint proceedures. Should resolve matters.

 

Leo.

 

Keep a copy of all correspondence.

[Laurence Hogg]

From my old notes when I was doing models for museums and scraping paint of cabins to find colours Pantone 301A is noted as GU economy livery, and the maroon as matching LMS railway maroon, the Pantone sheet we had did not have marron on it.

[kitman]

AKAIK Nb Sculpter is painted in:

Mason's House Colour Midnight Blue

Mason's House Colour Deep Red

Mason's House Colour Broken White (Coachline)

 

Nb Star at Brinklow is also painted in these colours.

 

This colour info was taken from a guy at Ellesmere Port.

 

Advice on varnishing already given by Dave Moore.

 

Sorry to hear about the delay in payment from your insurers. This has been true of most insurance paint jobs we have dealt with. Typically the insurer insists that the work is done first before they payout, leaving the customer to get the work done out of their own pocket.

 

Sometimes I get customers that want me to do the insurance work for them and when I ask to speak to the their insurer directly regarding the payment, the customer miraculously disappears. Some of those customers even want me to pay for the whole thing, promising that I will get my money back with in a couple of months. Well I'd love to help them out, but that arrangement is just not possible.

 

Good luck with the repaint

 

Regards, Chris

Edited June 21, 2010 by kitman

[Tim Lewis]

Since the incident at Welford in February when a BW contractor's vehicle blasted Badsey with hydraulic fluid, and took most of the paint off of the cabin, we have been trying to settle the matter with their insurers. NFU Mutual are playing all the usual insurance ploys to delay payment but we are now so fed up at seeing the boat looking very sad in its temporary paint, not to mention the deterioration, that we have decided to wait no longer. We have booked it in for the long awaited paint job. Every time I see a Woolwich in wartime austerity maroon and dark blue, it is a difference shade ranging from a bright maroon to drab pinky-red. We can imagine that working through a war, the bright colours faded to the drab.

So we still need to decide the answer to our questions :

What is the name of a suitable maroon and dark blue for the final coats?

Which brand sells each of them?

Should we finish with a coat of varnish or not?

 

Any advice please.

 

Not to be taken as gospel but we did a fair bit of research when we painted Fulbourne in Austerity colours and came up with the following:

 

Red - Dulux Ruby Fountain 1 Exterior High GlossColour Code 00YR 08/409

 

Blue - We originally used Homebase Oxford blue but finding it not very hard wearing we gota sample flake analysed by Crown, and we've been using this stuff (which we refer to as wartime blue) mixed to following Crown spec ever since:

 

Black Base 1 Litre

JN 16.5

RN 77.25

TN 15.5

 

 

Cabin Lining & Lettering - Magnolia

 

We have varnished but had a bad experience using Matt varnish.

 

Tim

Edited June 20, 2010 by Tim Lewis

[c c]

Truly great replies. Thank you.

Yes, we are going ahead and paying for the work to be done out of our own pocket and have sadly had to tell the vehicle owner (who has admitted liability) that we will take him to court to regain the costs, if his so-called insurers do not pay now. Costs by the way, include the hire of a boat to sleep on whilst Badsey is in dock at Braunston. That cost would have been Zero back in March when hire boats were laid up, but you can imagine what it is now!

Thanks again

[pete harrison]

Since the incident at Welford in February when a BW contractor's vehicle blasted Badsey with hydraulic fluid, and took most of the paint off of the cabin, we have been trying to settle the matter with their insurers. NFU Mutual are playing all the usual insurance ploys to delay payment but we are now so fed up at seeing the boat looking very sad in its temporary paint, not to mention the deterioration, that we have decided to wait no longer. We have booked it in for the long awaited paint job. Every time I see a Woolwich in wartime austerity maroon and dark blue, it is a difference shade ranging from a bright maroon to drab pinky-red. We can imagine that working through a war, the bright colours faded to the drab.

So we still need to decide the answer to our questions :

What is the name of a suitable maroon and dark blue for the final coats?

Which brand sells each of them?

Should we finish with a coat of varnish or not?

 

Any advice please.

 

Back in 1989 when I owned BADSEY I used the G.U.C.C.Co. Ltd. wartime livery, inspired by SCULPTOR which I had seen being delivered to Stoke Bruerne following restoration by Ian Kemp a few months before. Although I did considerable research on the layout I could not find anything really conclusive on colour tones, and using grey scale from black and white photographs was / is unacceptable.

 

I decided to make my selection based on common sense, i.e. why would the company have changed any of the colour tones from the paint they already had in stock from the previous 'coronation' livery (which to my mind would have used the colour tones of the Union flag). I then scoured colour charts to make my final selection and decided on International Paints for both undercoat and topcoat. This decision was partly based on availabilty as International Paints had a factory just up the road from Sherborne Street Wharf, Birmingham.

 

The tones I chose were Red Coral (with international red undercoat), Mauritius Blue (with International blue undercoat) and Sand (with International white undercoat). I then painted BADSEY myself over a long weekend (we always painted boats ourselves back then) with Dave Moore applying the lettering a few weeks later. I was extremely pleased with the end result and felt it was reflective of the original livery if not absolutely correct in every detail. The only two compromises I made was to paint the cabin end in the earlier square design as I knew I could do this better than the freehand 'ghost' shape, and I painted the top mast and luby in Red Coral in order to add some contrast to the plain Mauritius Blue running gear (cabin and engine room slides were also plain Mauritius Blue).

 

This paint job lasted for several years and was latterly maintained (and tidied up - my single white line was a bit wobbly !) by Phil Speight who owned BADSEY two owners after me.