I found the original turquoise under archeological layers of paint on my Type 65. Although it was over half a century ago I still remember it vividly because it was a colour I especially disliked. It was very much the same as the colour on the left of the exposed swatch in the photo above.
I couldn't bring myself to paint the car turquoise. However, had Adam been in a position to help at the time, I would have chosen one of the other Austin colours, which I believe was an option when the car was new.
I'm generally against anything to overt on the advertising front, I prefer word of mouth to in your face 'buy from me', its just better all round. If the archive folk wanted to have a chat I'm sure we could find a subtle way of doing things.
None of the cards are to my knowledge physically in the archive. The nice set lives in Cambridgeshire and I count myself very fortunate to have had it on my desk for a brief period. Ideally we'd have sent it to the factory for matching but the owner understandably was nervous about loosing them so we did it with a portable machine in my office. I'm not 100% happy with them all but they are as good as we will get unless I can get a set of cards to Manchester for a few days. The other set as mentioned is with the A10DC.
We have various old charts here dating from the early 30's backwards to mid 20's which are very well suited to anything post war. In normal times I'm always very happy for people to come and have a look. We painted my Morris 8 Van from a colour in our archive and it looks right whereas a close RAL would have looked a bit too 'strong' is I suppose the word, pure might be better. There is just a look to old colours that can't be explained.
We've spent five years researching Austin Seven woodwork in detail and we continue to perfect our patterns and templates as new information comes to light. This has cost us a lot of time and a reasonable amount of money, but we can probably safely claim to know more about Austin Seven body construction across the range than anyone before us.
As an enthusiast, I'm very happy to offer general advice for free. However, my son and I earn our livings from our researches and I have to occasionally draw the line when people ask for free drawings, detailed measurements, joinery tuition or particulars of our suppliers.
The information is out there and can be found if someone is prepared to do the leg-work. "Cherished Suppliers", who have done that work and have often taken substantial financial risks cannot be expected to give their efforts away for free.
I also been looking at colours i have a 34 jan registered 4 seater tourer in blue, am i right in thinking it should be a royal blue which is quite dark as have read something somewhere of opal blue but not sure if thats for my year or not, as im pretty sure the shade of blue it is now its not correct.
Any help would be great
many thanks
18-06-2020, 04:14 PM (This post was last modified: 18-06-2020, 04:20 PM by Archivist.)
As Adam correctly says, the Belco set remains in private (good) hands and the Archive negotiated their loan a) to digitise and publish on the Archive web site and b) to allow them to be scanned to get accurate formulations. These are the paints Adam now supplies. The beauty about the 2 sets we had access to (1936 and 1939 - both from the same source) have known provenance and have been permanently kept in the box in the dark so are, to all intents and purposes, as accurate as the day they were produced. I have not seen the ATDC set, though did share with them details of the sets we know about, but I gather they are not in such a good condition.
Picking up on PAZ205's post, I have a 1933 RP saloon and when I repainted it in the 70s, I rubbed back the added black paint on the body to reveal the original paint beneath. It was a *very* dark blue, almost darker than conventional Royal Blue. Though having looked at the 1936 Royal Blue -
Interesting thread. One place which can often yield the original paint on a Seven is behind the Patents plate on the dashboard. Not much help on a Nippy, but they can show original colour inside the glove pockets. I agree with Hugh about the Austin Royal Blue, it is more like black with a trace of blue in it.
18-06-2020, 05:30 PM (This post was last modified: 18-06-2020, 05:35 PM by Martin Prior.)
Confusingly, I believe that Austin listed both light and dark royal blues in the mid 'thirties.
My RP is supposedly finished in the (very!) Dark Royal Blue. It has a strong hint of dark purple in it and can look black in some lights, but much lighter in others. The paint supplier at the time (before I knew of Craftmaster) claimed to have access to a set of original Austin swatches.
About 18 months ago I had to do some remedial work to the offside bodywork on my RP, in the area of the bulkhead where the front wing attaches. It was necessary to repaint afterwards and I couldn't remember the colour I had painted it in the 1980s. I thought it was BL tartan red, but it wasn't. All I did was take the bonnet side to the trade shop that mixes and sells auto paint. They had a colour scanner which gave them the paint code and they then made me up a couple of 500ml spray cans to do the job. Easy peasy. The shade is R3505.
I imagine Adam that you will probably sell a lot more paint as a result of this thread, unless owners are aware of what you can offer and the authenticity of your matches they are of course unlikely to purchase from you. Ok I am in NZ, but I was completely unaware that you had done such a thorough job on the Belco charts.
I agree that anyone who has done extensive research on a subject has every right to be somewhat reluctant to give that information away, particularly if there has been a commercial investment. However I would say this, unless we share information as enthusiasts what we know will eventually be lost and we are all poorer as a result. For example Martin, whilst you are in business i would not expect you to share your hard earned working drawings and templates. However if you were to ever close up shop it would be admirable if you gifted this information to the clubs association for the betterment of the movement as a whole. I think anyone who has been on friends since the early days will agree that much positive learning about Austin 7's has come from the sharing of knowledge here. Including I would like to point the knowledge freely gained by some of our commercial suppliers.
