Egyptian Artillery

[Major Weenie]

Ah,
The technical adventures never end.  PC upgrade.  No hardware adventures, to speak of, but much of the old (frequently very old) software doesn't work under Windows 7, and I lost my LAF password.  The usual sort of thing.
Anyway...
Still plugging away on some of those Perry Egyptians.  Have 3 units of 9 complete along with some previous Bashi Bazouks, and with some Basingers 'in development.'  I actually have one  of the Perry Egyptian Krupp field guns.  Whilst filing & cleaning I realized that I don't actually know what color the gun carriage should be.  Any helpful information?
a.) Prussian grey, because it's a Krupp gun?
b.) British sort of blue grey, because of British influence?
c.) French sort of bottle green, because of French influence?
Thanks,
Maj Weenie.

[chicklewis]

Ah, Weenie, you are preparing for our 'early Sudan' playtest of the "Death in the Dark Continent" rules, are you not?  Devilishly clever. 

I checked The Mahdist Wars sourcebook collected from Savage and Soldier magazine and couldn't find the exact answer. 

The following is from the yahoo "colonial wars" group message archive, a wonderful searchable resource:
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"Tahmassebi, Stefan" wrote:
>I don't know about the Dervish, but the Prussians who manufactured, produced them and fielded them in their armies did so as follows:  The wood was painted a medium to light blue (I paint my models a medium/sea blue and highlight it with a light/sky blue) and the metal was painted black, and the gun was iron/steel colored (I paint my models an iron base and highlight them with silver). Basically this is the same artillery color scheme that the Prussians used throughout the Wars of the Austrian Succession, Seven Years War, the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, and all he 19th century wars.   So I painted my Egyptian Krupps the same color scheme as the Prussian Krupps. Somewhere I read or someone corroborated that the Egyptians did not repaint their purchased Krupps and used them in that color scheme.<

Chick

[Gluteus Maximus]

That seems like a very reasonable answer and it agrees with the research I've done. I couldn't find a definitive answer so went for the "factory finish" option too. My Mahdists' captured guns are a sort of greyish light blue, so near enough 

[former user]

I don't recall seeing any kind of painted wood in Sudan, apart from boats, where it was flaking off.
Given my perception that wood is usually painted only in humid conditions to keep it from rotting, I find the above approach perfectly convincing : used as bought from prussia/france/etc.

Comes to the the mind that the only wood varnish I've ever seen in Africa was some oily sooty resin wash to impregnate it against termites (simple paint wouldn't do the job) - of course I've not been everywhere in Africa ....

[Major Weenie]

Righto,
So I prowled through my various shades of grey, and came up with a 'Horizon Blue' doll paint made by AMERICANA. It's "French Grey Blue: DA98.  More grey than blue, I actually didn't think that it had any blue in it until I painted it on the gun carriage.  Then it looks like grey, with a hint of blue shading.  Hope this works. 
Photo to follow... eventually.
Regards,
Maj W