Shocked of Oxford indeed, whatever next.

Shambolic of Shirrell Heath here.

To be fair, he does often work evenings and most weekends too, albeit 50/50 paying jobs and homers. I do have him awake at 07:00 though on show sites since Rory and I have to do breakfast while the truck cover comes off and he cleans it; left to Himself we'd just get cornflakes and a biscuit, that is, if he wasn't already busy bumping gums with someone. We do leave the washing up though, seeing as how he's in cleaning mode.


Now the paint thing; I posted a reply to Rob but the naffware presented me with an error screen rather than the post which is now lost in space, as it were.

So, there is no easy answer and while the Brits will recognise the paint shades others may not, Ballard doesn't have a formula per se but does it by eye and experience from the original samples and the truck itself.

He takes a base of "standard" NATO green (OD if you will) and adds signal red, canary yellow, black and some white "to taste", Ballard says the originals he has are not truly flat but almost semi-satin and when using a matt base colour with gloss additives, only a tad of matting agent is needed.

Its the original sample that's important and Rory reminds me our friend in Eastleigh has an ex-Canadian jeep in No.2 DTB. His colour sample was a Canadian tin hat bought in Canada and apparently quite common and cheap over there.

Now apart from the master chef concoction of Ballard snr, young R Ballard has been re-assembling the CDSW axles after machining and sleeving for those brass split-ball spring anchors - a bit of less than sensible M-C design, but that's another story.
(Don't fret Mike K, I'll send pictures)


To get the paint shade right from some protected, bolted-up faces he has stumbled upon a near perfect No.2 DTB with just two components; I've seen it next to the F15 and it is PDG.

Simply good old British Army gloss deep bronze green and red oxide primer; the DBG is common stuff here; so common I see RB uses it as an undercoat/sealer on the red oxide before the final correct matt shade. To finally attain the dark green of the original CDSW parts some yellow was necessarily added.

I have no idea if DBG is available elsewhere but overseas Champs, Ferrets and the like seem to be presented in resplendent post war gloss DBG so perhaps it is.

I'm minded though that most likely ultimate paint shade standards were not available 60 years ago and in any case it does somewhat depend on the eye of the beholder and the nature of your daylight of course. Perhaps even back then there were noticeable differences between paint batches and manufacturers.

So, if you're waiting for an exact formula using current paint codes then I'm sorry to disappoint, it seems not to be an exact science.

R.