I'm painting up some artillery for CWB and was wondering what paints people were using for the limbers and gun carriages , cheers Alex
Hello Alex
Let me find the topic where we chatted about this.
Found it
Look under "gun colours" on the Mexican revolution board. Deceber 31st 2020.
martin :)
The direct link is:
https://rulesforcommonman.uk/index.php?topic=3056.msg30305#msg30305
Simon
Many years back I bought Paul Stevenson's excellent Argus book on wargaming the ACW, and it has proved to be a great source of inspiration for me. I will quote some of what he says on artillery colours:
"Artillery pieces had brass (actually bronze) barrels if smoothbore, and gunmetal or black barrels if rifled. Carriages, caissons, limbers and wagons were 'olive green' in the Union army (ie really a shade more like yellow ochre) and grey blue in the Army of Northern Virginia".
Of course the Confederates used captured guns, so they may well have still had the olive green carriages. Early in the war there was probably less standardisation, eg the four Apostle guns at First Bull Run (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) apparently had red carriages. As guns were an important part of any army's repertoire it is unlikely the carriages would have remained as bare wood, but the Confederates may have had to resort to paint that was available rather than the official colour scheme.
Andy
Bronze barrels don't rust, so were left bare metal and regular use kept them pretty shiny. Rifled iron barrels were given a black coating to prevent rusting.
Wooden carriage wheels were also interchangeable between carriages, limbers and caissons, so you may even have had some guns which had seen hard service with wheels of different shades or colours - much like field repaired WW1 aircraft often had replacement rudders and ailerons different to the main fuselage...
I'd never considered that angle, Neil, but varied wheel colours could look really good on the table for the more war-weary units.
Simon
Thank you all for your detailed replies and I will check out the Mex Rev thread , cheers Alex