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Mario - To me it's a dream shop. Actually your pics are a treasure trove of
color references for an old machine shop that has seen years of continuing use.
Some observations and thoughts:
1. Machines tended to be painted some shade of gray from the 1930's and back.
Greens got popular in later periods.
2. Note the lathe with a flaking off coat of lighter gray on top of dark gray.
3. The cone pulleys where the smaller high speed diameter that never gets used
has a light rust coating.
4. Gears that are black with a little shine from accumulations of grease
5. Bare metal surfaces have a cast iron gray with a slight shine. Definitely
not silver.
6. The natural steel gray of tools gets softened by dust and light rust from
disuse, especially if they are stored near the floor.
7. Tools tend to be stacked in an orderly fashion to take up the least space
and be easy to find. Tools scattered uniformly on a workbench top would be an
uncommon sight in a working shop.
8. Steel chip piles in a working shop will tend to be somewhat of a shiny
silver gray. Cast iron chips will be a dull dark gray. Brass chips a subdued
gold color. Cast iron chips will be rare in a maintenance shop. Common in a
production manufacturing shop of the period.
9. Tool handles in real machine shops were never painted bright colors. Bright
colors for safety are really an artifact of the late 20th century.
10. Rust on the horizontal cutoff saw is a sign of water cutting coolant with
minimal oily additives acting on the fine cutting chips.
11. The use of small wooden boxes for miscellaneous parts storage
12. Grease and rubber belt wear particles forming a vertical splatter line on
an adjacent wall.
13. Stools next to tools with automatic feeds (usually lathes).
14. An oily rust patina on the less used extremities of milling machine tables
and combinations of oil and fine chips on the exposed v-ways of mills.
15. Splotchy grayness to the floors of most shops. Tend to be darker where oil
and coolant stains come off the machine tool and the operators stand. Almost
flat black for dirt floors, grays for cement and dark gray from oil varying to
softer warm grays and dirty browns for wood floors.
16. Belt and gear guards are scarcer in pre 1940 shops. Post 1940 they might
have a newer look indicative of add-ons due to safety programs.
17. Photos show substantial color and brightness variations due to light from
windows. Some well placed artistic work in that direction should be highly
effective on a model normally illuminated by subdued lighting of a layout room
or display case.
Thanks again for sharing these photos. ..........Ed Weldon
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