Impressions Ammo box colours

[Ian Peavot]

Greetings one and all I hope I am posting my question in the correct area.

Here in the UK getting some items of kit that approaches anything authentic looking can be, to say the least, hard work and chief amongst this are ammunition boxes/crates. Some years ago I decided to start making reasonable facsimiles from thin sheet materials and painted them to the nearest colour i could find, whilst they were ok from a distance they really weren't good enough to be classed authentic looking. So lately I have started making them from solid pine boards to the sizes stipulated in The ordnance manual for the use of the officers of the Confederate States Army. Whilst it states what colours the different kind of ordnance should be, by today's standards its very difficult to know what modern colour to use and I really want to get it right. You can get a rough idea by looking at surviving originals but not to any degree of accuracy, so the six million dollar question is; would anyone out there know what the RAL or Pantone numbers would be that'll be a good match for the different kind of small arms and artillery ammunition? I believe the 'Olive' colour might be RAL6022 Olive drab, but I cannot determine what the 'Lead' or the 'Blue' or the 'Red' numbers might be, would anyone be able to help me.

Thanking you all kindly.

 

[Kurt G]

There was a lot of color variation even in WW2 .Try discussing olive drab or dark yellow with a WW2 armor guy ! You might find something if you check out Don Troiani's prints . He is usually very accurate with uniforms and equipment . I don't think I would worry about getting precise colors . I would bet there would have been a fair amount of variation , especially with Confederate items .

 

[drezac]

There should be a section in the ordnance manuals that has the formulas for the paints. With that, you might be able to find someone (most likely an artist as opposed to someone at a paint store) that might be able to help reproduce the correct colors from the old formulas. I don't know if you were aware of this, but box dimensions for the Civil War were inside dimensions. The wood that was used was not of uniform thickness, so they specified the inside dimensions so the items would fit. One exception was for the boxes that held the equipment for the battery forges. All of these boxes had to fit in a limber box like a puzzle, so all of those used outside dimensions.

 

[Ian Peavot]

There should be a section in the ordnance manuals that has the formulas for the paints. With that, you might be able to find someone (most likely an artist as opposed to someone at a paint store) that might be able to help reproduce the correct colors from the old formulas. I don't know if you were aware of this, but box dimensions for the Civil War were inside dimensions. The wood that was used was not of uniform thickness, so they specified the inside dimensions so the items would fit. One exception was for the boxes that held the equipment for the battery forges. All of these boxes had to fit in a limber box like a puzzle, so all of those used outside dimensions.

Thank you for your reply, yes i've read through the paint recipes and have considered going down that road, but it would be quite time consuming, so trying to get a match through RAL or Pantone would be much quicker I think. I am aware the dimensions are internal as the packets of ammo were of a uniform size and board size thickness varied considerably.

 

[Ian Peavot]

There was a lot of color variation even in WW2 .Try discussing olive drab or dark yellow with a WW2 armor guy ! You might find something if you check out Don Troiani's prints . He is usually very accurate with uniforms and equipment . I don't think I would worry about getting precise colors . I would bet there would have been a fair amount of variation , especially with Confederate items .

Thank you for your reply, that is a good pointer about the WW2 guys and Don Troiani, will give that some serious thought. I take your point about not being precise but I want to be in the same ball park and get reasonably close to the original colours. I appreciate that different batches of paint probably wouldn't have been the same, due to various reasons and colour fixing then isn't what it is nowadays. For the most part the Confederacy didn't colour code their ammo crates, except in the very early days of the war, they relied more on the description and sometimes included a small pictorial image of the ordnance on the crate as well, I think for the most part this was due to the shortage of paint and the cost of it, the money could be spent elsewhere.