"What color do you paint your iron wheel rims?" Topic

The subject line says it all. I've been brown,rust orange, black and gray.

Sort of a metallic grey-black. I think the actual name of the paint is 'Gunmetal'.

Gunmetal for me also.

Black, and have gunmetal but always black.
Tried mud but didn't like it yet mud would be the most color

Black usually, but have used a Ceramcoat color called "hammered iron", too.

Another vote for Gunmetal, kind of a metallic black.

That being said I normally lightly dry brush anything that is going to be on, or very near ground level, a sort of dusty brown. Think Vallejo 70.825 Pale Brown.

It's Gunmetal for me too.

Gunmetal (but if I did weathering/real life, it would be Mud… ;-)

Dark brown, assuming we're showing guns on campaign and not in peacetime barracks. Two miles' travel on unpaved roads would scrape all paint/oil off the tires, and unpainted iron rusts brown quite literally overnight. The only realistic alternative would be mud/dust.

Another Gunmetal

Also gunmetal.

Black.

I usually go gunmetal as well, but I've been thinking about this. Not wagon wheels, but tank tracks, which don't tend to look metallic after they've been on the road for a while, and the same principle applies. They look grey to me, with lighter grey along ground contact points, then light coloured dirt in recesses.

Model Master "grimy flat black"

Mud or Vallejo "Oily Steel", a kind of dirty metal colour.

Cheers,
John

Gunmetal.

Tank tracks I do the entire track and runners ng gear in mud, with gunmetal highlights on the contact points. Which then looks like every bit of tracked construction machinery Ive ever seen.

Not too many metal tyre carts around these parts, but I don't see why the metal tyres shouldn't abrade in a similar manner if they are in regular use.

Gunmetal, dry-brushed on black.

Iron.

Which for me is black and a touch of silver with a tiny bit of orange.

Matt Black, because it looks so good against French Artillery Green, however wrong. (and it is)

Nonsense of course, but, surely, so is Gunmetal Black. Rust brown or shiny steel or mud of course, but gunmetal black is a "modern" paint finish for infantry weaponry metalwork or aircraft engines. It is a black paint with a tiny "blob" of some kind of silver added.

Gunmetal. That is a mixture of black and silver. But I don't mix it, I buy it.

Tom

Gunmetal too, but everything then gets coated in the dip so that it looks suitably grubby.

I use Foundry blackened barrel. The ironmongery on cannons gets the darkest of the 3 shades, the wheel rims the lightest. My reasoning being that more of the metal should show through on the rims due to wear and tear.

" gunmetal, variety of bronze, formerly used for ordnance. Modern admiralty gunmetal is composed of 88 percent copper, 10 percent tin, and 2 percent zinc and is used for gears and bearings that are to be subjected to heavy loads and low speeds. It withstands atmospheric, steam, and seawater corrosion and is suitable for valves, pump parts, and steam fittings."……. link ………… Sorry, but "gunmetal" is NOT used for wagon wheels…. Look up how spoked wheels are made. One of the last steps is to take a steel rim tire, heat it to expand it and then bang it onto the wood outside rim. IT shrinks (cool with water) and compresses the entire wheel with tension and dishes the wheel (makes it stronger, springier and turns corners without breaking) ……. IT is STEEL. Steel, when it is scrapped and abrated by stones and sand is a shiny silver color. Take a look at railroad wheels that are in use for an example. …. Most of the wheel rims that you pobably see are NOT in use and are rusted or painted. ……… if you have or have seen old wheelbarrals with metal rims, you can get another look. ……. I paint wagon rims silver color.

No, these tires were not steel, they were wrought iron. They were black when they came out of the forge, and when they were heated and hammered onto the wooden wheel. In garrison and when on parade for the Emperor they were painted (probably black). On campaign all paint would have scraped off the first day, and the first night the dew would have rusted them brown. Subsequent days of transit would scrape the scales of rust off, but the base brown would remain (as anybody who's tried to remove rust from wrought iron would know firsthand), if the tire wasn't covered in dirt which it almost always would be. The tires of wooden wheeled conveyances including gun carriages would in fact look the same color as the horseshoes of the horses pulling them.

Modern steel railroad tires or caterpillar track shoes are NOT a good guide to pre-20th century ironmongery.

Yes, wrought iron should be a dark gray. I've been use to some old (post 1900) farm equipement with steel rimmed wheels.

I paint mine with a kharki/mud colour to represent use on unmetalled roads.

Scott Washburn:
I would like to contact you about SF publishing (I'm writing an SF novel), but I don't know how.

Black

It has been a long time since I had to paint artillery and I pulled them out and looked at them. Then I remembered years ago I switched to painting them a rust or orange mud/clay color.

Gunmetal.

(Which, for reasons I'll leave to the native anglophones to explain, is not the colour of the alloy with the same name.)

For 18th June, mud up to the axles, with a few wisps of grass attached, if deployed and in action.

Rust if standing around overnight without moving.

Some bare metal, but brown (as Eumelus so ably described it) if travelling on a surfaced road.

Black because it just looks so good, it is what we grew up with, however unlikely and, after painting nearly 200 guns for the French, I am stuck with it now.

A very intersting discussion this has been.

Scott:
To clarify, I'm looking for information about your publisher. Their website doesnt say much.