Practical Carriage and Wagon Painting / A Treatise on the Painting of Carriages, Wagons and Sleighs, Embracing Full and Explicit Directions for Executing All Kinds of Work, Including Painting Factory Work, Lettering, Scrolling, Ornamenting, Varnishing, etc., with Many Tested Recipes and Formulas

by M. C. Hillick

FOOTNOTE:

[A] With apologies to Mr. W. G. Scott and others who have published similar but more elaborate and scientific presentations.

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CHAPTER V.
THE APPLICATION OF COLORS TO SURFACES.—GREENS—BLUES—REDS—YELLOWS—BROWNS—BLACKS—WHITE.

The greens comprise a class of colors many of which are leaders in popularity as panel colors on heavy pleasure vehicles, such as landaus, broughams, rockaways, etc. Nearly all the greens are used as solid colors, requiring no specially prepared ground work color. The ease, however, with which solidity and density of color is obtained upon a surface is greatly overshadowed by the difficulty—the extreme difficulty, perhaps I should say—of applying most of the fine carriage greens now fashionable. Such greens as olive, Quaker, Brewster, and Merrimac green, individually and collectively favorites, require very deft and painstaking manipulation in the cup and under the brush in order to insure workman-like results. Probably olive green manifests the most pronounced disposition to assert the strength of some one or more of its color constituents independently and to the detriment of the remaining ones. To overcome this difficulty, the color in the cup should be stirred frequently after having been mixed thoroughly when in preparation for the surface. In applying greens to the surface—and this statement is intended to cover the entire list of greens used in carriage and wagon painting—cross brushing at the final conclusion of laying off the color may well be avoided. The tendency of cross brushing at the ends of a panel is to show two or more different shades of the same green. The rule holds good, when using the greens, to adhere to thorough methods of mixing, to keep the color well stirred in the cup, and to desist from cross brushing at the extremities of the panels in finishing up.

These characteristics so conspicuously developed as opportunity offers have prompted a majority of carriage painters and colorists in our best shops to use most of the greens employed on fine carriage surfaces in the capacity of flat color coats (two coats in nearly all cases covering solid) and then applying clear rubbing varnish, thus doing away with the color-and-varnish coats altogether. The greens which are used as glazing colors comprise ultramarine green, verdigris, and transparent bronze green.