Here is a great deal of information on Saxon artillery from Peter Fitzgerald of Calpe Miniatures. I cannot better it from my sources and he is usually spot on.
"The Saxon guns were traditionally painted in black and yellow. The woodwork was painted in an oily paint similar to creosote. The metal work was painted yellow. I have visited the Konigstein fortress and I've seen the guns displayed there. I can only conclude that the yellow used to paint the guns nowadays is a modern synthetic substitute for the real thing, as they are painted a startling bright yellow. One of my customers described the colour scheme as ‘bumblebee artillery.' No, the real colours must have been more muted than this as natural pigments were used. I suggest using a brown ochre for a more natural yellow.
The M1810 guns however, may not have conformed to this colour scheme. The one surviving gun easily accessible to researchers is displayed in the Copenhagen military museum. From the photos I have seen it is a 12pdr. It has bronze, unpainted metal work. Some have argued that this metal work must have been added at a later stage and is not original. My answer to this is that there is no solid proof for this theory. The M1810 guns were a new artillery system and there is a strong possibility that these three guns may have been designed with bronze metalwork. The bronze only appears on the guns; the caisson and limber for the system conform to the traditional colours that I will discuss in a moment. If the only existing example of a gun has bronze metalwork we cannot dismiss the possibility that this was indeed the way they were designed just because the traditional gun colours were black and yellow.
All the cannon in the M1810 system had brown leather aprons protecting the elevating mechanism for the gun barrels.
A German customer recently informed me that there is a second gun from this system in existence in one of the German army museums. It is supposedly a 6pdr. gun. I have not had a chance to follow this up but if any of you do have solid information on this ‘other' gun, I would love to know where it is stored and whether it has bronze metalwork. Until I have solid proof to the contrary, I will paint my M1810 guns with bronze metalwork. The shell gun and four pdr. will have the traditional yellow finish to the metalwork. Note that the bronze metalwork was only on the gun carriage for the M1810 guns. The wheels were all black including the metalwork and the little mudguards over the hub of the wheels. The same is true for the caisson and limber. Indeed the limber seems to have been all black with the exception of the padded seat over the ready box on the limber that was beige.
The caisson had black undercarriage and wheels. The main body of the carriage was mid-blue and the lid of the caisson was a reddish-brown colour."
Hope this helps.
gets started with Flintloque.
