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

THE BLUES.

Next to the greens in popularity as fine panel colors come the blues, ultramarine blue ranking as the most widely used of the various varieties. The elegance and aristocratic effects obtained by the employment of ultramarine blue are secured only by the development of a ground work free from imperfections. As a matter of fact, the successful use of almost every coach color, whether used as a glazing color or otherwise, is contingent upon the quality of the ground color and upon such a harmonious assimilation of the different coats as will promote the greatest elasticity and permanence. Of the ultramarine blue there are three shades, light, medium, and dark. Most color manufacturers prepare and sell ground colors adapted to the different shades of the blue, the ultramarine being invariably used as a color-and-varnish or glazing coat. Nevertheless, it is often necessary, even if not desirable, to shop prepare the ground color for the ultramarine blues when wanted.

For the light shade of ultramarine blue, Prussian blue and a superior grade of white lead are so combined as to produce a blue of good depth and body, unusual care being taken to have the blue and white thoroughly united and beaten into one indivisible pigment. If keg lead be used in making the ground, the oil should be first completely washed out of the pigment with benzine or turpentine, and varnish, instead of oil, be employed as the color binder. This practice provides for sure and reliable drying of the ground color. The ground for the medium ultramarine blue may be made of the ingredients above stated, the color being simply adjusted to a deeper shade of blue, more blue and less white being used in the admixture. In both the light and the medium, the ground color should approximate the glaze color and enhance the richness of effect. For the dark shade of ultramarine blue, a coat of lampblack furnishes a most excellent and effective ground color.

Probably the richest effect in blue is furnished by glazing ultramarine blue over a ground of very deep green. Transparent cobalt blue, a glaze color always, requires a ground of Prussian blue and white. Body cobalt is used as a solid color, and for a panel color on traps, breaks, and vehicles of that order it produces admirable and fetching effects. The glaze colors are best used in a flowing medium of elastic rubbing varnish, especially when body surfaces are being coated, and the brushes adapted to applying such colors are the 1 1/2-inch and the 2-inch badger flowing brush or a soft, half-elastic bristle brush suited to the size of the panels being coated.