Engineers Blue

This the stuff?

PS your local engineering supply company should carry it, if you prefer not to buy online.

Also here, at about half the price from e-bay.

Peter

Out of interest, how come it's blue?

Michael

To give a good contrast I suspect. It is only a grade of printers ink repackaged iirc so could be any colour. Coates used to be a big producer.

AWEM

Historically because it is coloured with Prussian blue, which is a strong blue dye. The advantage of a dye over a pigment is that the particle size can be arbitrarily small.

Mark Rand RTFM

In message , Andrew Mawson writes

A small tube of Prussian Blue oil paint from the Art shop should do the trick.

Mike

How do you stop paint from setting?

Mark Rand RTFM

The particle size is certainly small. A number of years ago I used to use it to test flatness of a small alloy wedge which was for crucial part in a strain gauge displacement transducer.

The company I was working for just happened to have a accredited lab where they calibrated slip gauges etc. I recall that we detected much less than a micron resolution depending how liberal you were with it.

Wayne....

It is oil paint. It is a bugger to get it to dry out if you want it to. Pete

Try it with black and you'll see that blue has a much better contrast on steel.

But I think the OP asked for a blue for touching/scraping and not for marking out. But both are blue.

Nick

Just bought a tin locally, £3.19 + vat. Anyone know if it's still available in a tube? I found that much handier but my tube has gone walkabout.

Cheers Tim

Had a tube once but I found it very waxy and not inclined to stick, also gets squashed easily in a toolbox, much prefer the tins.

Engineers Blue is actually an ink and is made in the country by Coates Inks. They gave me a kilo tub when I was on a job there which has since been passed on to the Eternal fire museum as they have bigger bearings than I have

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

Visit the new Model Engineering adverts page at:-

A kilo! That's a lifetime supply for a county!!

BugBear (using the stuff 1 pea sized splodge at a time)

Both Chronos and Cromwell do tubes and tins. Can't find it with J&L, but they may have a funny name for it.

Mark Rand RTFM