Airco\De Havilland D.H.2

I'm making one of these little planes in 1\72 and have a question about the painting instructions.
It says that the top and front of the fuz, the interplane struts and the rear strutwork that the tail feathers are attached to should all be painted grey.
This sort of agrees with colour illustrations that I have seen.
My question is whether this really is grey paint or bare metal.
Can anyone shed any light on this?
Cheers,
Nigel

heathers.co.uk> wrote:
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As they were wooden, grey makes more sense. Maybe metal fittings at the joins, but the main length of the struts would be painted.

heathers.co.uk> wrote:
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That is going to be a tough one. Museum planes would very likely be painted now, even if originally they were bare. And rather than bare unpainted metal, they would likely have had some sort of surface treatment, like a "baked oil" or a gunmetal finish. But the only way to know for sure today is to find the process specs used in manufacture. Those kind of questions are getting VERY hard to answer today, as those who actually built them are few and far between, and getting fewer each year.
In later years there were more standard specifications and standards that addressed these issues. But in WW1 and before it was each company for itself :-(
Again the caution about using museum planes as examples- even for later eras where standards were available, and when color photography was more common and can be found, I see museum planes with finishes that were certainly not what originally were found on the planes, so I assume the situation is even worse for WW1 craft.
On the other hand, hard for anyone to prove you wrong :-)

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Back in the day, when I was in the service, we protected the wood on our training rifles with linseed oil. If that was used by the RFC, the wood would look varnised and the metal shiney.

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we used neat's foot oil to make leather soft, clean and somewhat waterproof. i love that stuff. an old biker bud found his 60's chopper left in a shed. we got it cleaned and running except the beautifull leather bags were ready to crack. they were rock hard. when i told him we could restore them, he called me a crazy bastard. he said if i could restore them, he would paint my hot rod thumper. he is an expert painter and charges major cash. so i jumped on it. i brushed on a good coat of neat's foot, repeated everyday for a week and at the end, they made a baby's butt feel like sandpaper. just call me glossy.....

snipped-for-privacy@some.domain wrote:
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Oh that's slick. I might try that on my old boots.
Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

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sure, and it will do major cleaning. i thought you old guy's knew everything?

snipped-for-privacy@some.domain wrote:
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Apparently so. You just told me. ;)
So, when is your birthday?
Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

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july....damn, you're cruel!

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Before this thread gets too far away from the original question,
All wood and metal parts of the DH.2 were painted light grey. An ideal publication to borrow, or buy if you can, is Windsock Datafile 48, Airco DH2 by BJ Gray, and published by Albatros http://www.windsockdatafilespecials.co.uk/

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And I remember one from the Profiles File #91 (found in book 4) that shows the vertical struts in alternating red/white bands.

Thnaks guys - I'll stick with the painting guide - grey for the majority of the struts and as you say the outer set are more decorative - blue and white stripes on my example - just the outer ones though, the inners and fuz struts are plain grey.
Cheers,
Nigel