1934 Titanine colours

Three on the BStd swatches

Thanks Tim and everyone who has posted, its all very helpfull and interesting. I hadnt realised there were different shades of Brunswick Green.
i will post some pics of progress shortly
Ken

Many thanks for the interesting posts, my local paint factors told me that the BRG used by Bentley in the early 30’s was Dark Brunswick Green, however as stated it does seem a bit dark from the pictures I have seen.
Tim: you say your original chart shows 2 green colours and I wonder if you could match both to the British standards please which would be usefull to see.
Its a shame that no mention has been found of what shade of green was used
Thanks again
Ken

Hi Ken,

There are two greens on the 1935 Titanine UK color chart which may be close to what was used on the Comet.
There is a medium green, ‘Green-Shade No. TE 35’ and a dark green, ‘Green-Shade No. TE 32.
I have macthed these to my BS fan deck and have determined that the following BS colors are the best matches for the two Titanine greens.
‘Green-Shade No. TE 35’ matches best to ‘BS225 Lt. Brunswick Green’ but needs to have a tiny bit more green for a perfect match.
‘Green-Shade No. TE 32’ matches best to ‘BS226 Md. Brunswick Green’ but needs to have a tiny bit more yellow for a perfect match.
But as is both the BS225 and the BS226 are very close matches for the two Titanine greens on my color chart.
There were no real close matches to my RAL fan deck colors.
I hope this proves useful to you Ken.

Cheers,
Tim

Many thanks for the interesting posts, my local paint factors told me that the BRG used by Bentley in the early 30’s was Dark Brunswick Green, however as stated it does seem a bit dark from the pictures I have seen.
Tim: you say your original chart shows 2 green colours and I wonder if you could match both to the British standards please which would be usefull to see.
Its a shame that no mention has been found of what shade of green was used
Thanks again
Ken

Hi Ken,

I will try and match the two Titanine greens tomorrow.
Forecast here (Chicago) is for clouds and rain tomorrow, rain and snow on Thursday, and finally sun on Friday.
When matching colors I always like to match under different lighting conditions so I may not post the BS matches until Friday when I finally have sunny conditions to match to (as well as cloudy).

Cheers,
Tim

Titanine color chart

I had thought that Titanines range was quite limited, but looking at the range of greens in the 1935 chart above has caused me to revise that opinion..! Interesting. Perhaps some were available to order, but dealers stocked a limited range….? Some manufactures, such as Percivals used few colours. Most of their Vega’s seem to have been silver and pale blue…
One last thing;- In the 1930’s, many a/c weren’t actually painted in a gloss finish, but a semi-gloss eggshell. I’ve never really known why this was for sure, but it may have been because a high-gloss finish tended to show-up more faults such as panting. Just my three-‘apeth…:)
S.

Hi all,

My 1935 Titanine (London) commercial color chart contains 24 “standard” color samples.
And I have a mid-1930s commercial Titanine America color chart that has 32 color samples. The colors on this color chart are more American colors (similar to Berry Bros.) such as ‘Loening Yellow’, ‘Travel Air Blue’, ‘Stearman Vermillion’, etc.
The large American paint company Berry Bros. had a lot more aircraft colors available than Titanine.
The actual paint samples on my 1935 Titanine color chart are high gloss, not in anyway semi-gloss or eggshell.
And as to the colors of the Percival Vegas (Gulls), a friend in the UK who has done quite a bit of research on these planes has determined that the standard Percival ‘house colors’ were silver with turquoise fuselage, most likely Titanine ‘Turquoise Blue-Shade no. TE 140, which appears as a pale bluish turquoise.

Cheers,
Tim

IF you want a selection :-
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The Dark Green (BRG) is BS381 226 Mid Brunswick Green

Hello Stan, Any chance of a picture of your Fox moth in the Brunswick Green to see what it looks like
Thanks
Ken

Here’s a couple to start

The BRM P25 I was referring to was raced by Jo Bonnier and I think it may have been run by UDT Laystall. It was a very light Green but was still referred to as British Racing Green. The works cars were generally nearer to Brunswick Green.
Brunswick Green is generally accepted as British Racing Green by most people but my source, a very knowledgable model maker who still runs a business making limited production car and aircraft kits researched BRG extensively and came up with 108 different shades.
I always had the impression that the Comet was much lighter than Brunswick Green but I can’t place where I got that from.

Not just b+w film. I recall that in the early 60s the cover photos on Motor Sport magazine – the only easy source of colour to me – always showed the BRMs as being a dark blue. I only saw a Parnell Racing one for real, and it was a fairly normal shade of BRG. I don’t know whether the works team were different.

I would argue that just because a British racing car was painted green, that didn’t make that colour British Racing Green, and a light green certainly wasn’t! I’m sure that the precise shade neither mattered nor was adhered too – any decent dark shade would do but certainly a Brunswick Green rather than an olive or any other hue if you deserved the specific name.

Colour Conundrum.

It’s true that some folks have used dodgy versions of BRG over the years (I used to do a bit of Hillclimbing and one or two folks seemed to have thrown a a tiny blob of green into a tin of black…!), but I ran a business for thirty years making extensive use of pigmented polymers and there was wide agreement as to what BRG was. We produced products in BRG with no variations. Generally, we used pigments based on suppliers own, BS and RAL and no other standards seemed to be used. I can’t speak for outside the UK of course.

Supplier Llewellyn Ryland have several charts online here;-

http://www.llewellyn-ryland.co.uk/standardrange.html
http://www.llewellyn-ryland.co.uk/bs5252.html
http://www.llewellyn-ryland.co.uk/ralcolours.html

Of course, apparent colours on a PC monitor don’t mean diddley, but LR used to send out colour-charts FOC. Brunswick Green was I believe used by the passenger locomotives of the Great Western Railway. My recollection is that this was browner than BRG, which looked more blue.

Black and white film can react strangely, depending on the emulsions used, condition etc. Added to that, the depth and transluciency of the paint can affect the apparent shade in a B&W photo.
I have a similar problem to Ken in pinning-down some Titanine colours. I have B&W photos of the same machines appearing in different apparent shades in different photos on the same day…:confused:
I had thought that Titanines range was quite limited, but looking at the range of greens in the 1935 chart above has caused me to revise that opinion..! Interesting. Perhaps some were available to order, but dealers stocked a limited range….? Some manufactures, such as Percivals used few colours. Most of their Vega’s seem to have been silver and pale blue…
One last thing;- In the 1930’s, many a/c weren’t actually painted in a gloss finish, but a semi-gloss eggshell. I’ve never really known why this was for sure, but it may have been because a high-gloss finish tended to show-up more faults such as panting. Just my three-‘apeth…:)
S.

Hello Stan, Any chance of a picture of your Fox moth in the Brunswick Green to see what it looks like
Thanks
Ken

Many thanks for the interesting posts, my local paint factors told me that the BRG used by Bentley in the early 30’s was Dark Brunswick Green, however as stated it does seem a bit dark from the pictures I have seen.
Tim: you say your original chart shows 2 green colours and I wonder if you could match both to the British standards please which would be usefull to see.
Its a shame that no mention has been found of what shade of green was used
Thanks again
Ken

Hi.
Well the nearest RAL code to what these days we might call British racing green (think Bentleys, BRM etc–Brunswick green) is RAL 6009. I’m using it on a couple of bike restorations.
(a 1900 Singer and a 1963 Francis Barnett).
Francis Barnett called it Arden green and I think theirs was mixed by ICI.
RAL 2009 gives a nice deep green, and is certainly close.

However, I’ve always assumed (perhaps wrongly) that G-ACSR was a lighter shade of green.
Interesting stuff.
Andy

The Airfix kit of that Comet gives it as Brunswick Green no3.

My information re BRG is as quoted by WJ244 above. There is no such thing as a definitive BRG. The nearest that I have got to a “representative” colour is Brunswick Green. That is the shade we used on my Fox Moth ZK-APT, and is basically a gloss version of the dark green camoflage colour used by the RNZAF during the War

I was told years ago that British Racing Green is a generic term that is used to describe something like 108 different shades of green ranging from the light green used on some of the front engined BRM Grand Prix cars to almost Black.

http://www.clubhyper.com/reference/bsc1931wm_1.htm

BSC 1931.

Any chance of colour scanning the chart and making available copies?

We have 2 aeroplanes we would like to check.

Scion

Titanine color chart

I also have the RAL colors fan deck and can match to that as well.

Cheers,
Tim

I think you will find that these were British Standard colours, I also understand that these match to the ‘RAL’ colour chart.