Sorry for going over stuff that I know has been covered in the past, I guess a lot of it has probably been erased. The BSA petrol tank transfer the one with B.S.A written in red, should it have a cream or gold background? From the photos of old bikes its hard to tell as the as it could either be cream that has tarnished or gold that has faded a bit.
Secondly, is the contract number painted in an off white?
Hi Glenn..the transfer background colour is cream.
Regarding the lettering my own theory is that it was slightly 'off white'
The reason I think that is that all my tanks are painted by a traditional signwriter and he told me about the 'standard' colours used by signwriters.
These are the 'default' colours they will use if no exact colour is specified. eg. 'signwritewrs red', signwriters blue' etc. 'Signwriters white' is not in fact a pure white but slightly 'off'. I had a tank done a couple of years back in RA colours (blue/red,off white) and the 'standard' colours looked just right.
As the Army employed numerous signwriters I think that was probably what was applied. As usual there is, as yet, no proof of the theory either way...Ian
I have some original census number work on the 1939 tank here and there is no doubt that it's not brilliant white in the modern sense but it's not as far over as an ivory colour.
One of the colours listed for the mobilisation code bars was 'White Lead, GS' which is probably the only pure white that you'd find on vehicles, being the simple white primer.
Mike Starmer suggested a touch of yellow and a touch of grey added to a white base for my markings and I'm happy with the result. Just the tip of an artist's brush is enough to take the edge off the white.
I painted the tips of my mudguards white, and then I took some of the left over spar varnish that I had from covering the BSA transfers, and covered the white paint. It gave it an old slightly yellowed look.