Hi all, I regularly refurbish metal wooodworking planes and most are easy to match the finish, STANLEY being Black, MARPLES usually red and so on.

Blacks and reds are available easily in the pretty much spot on matching colours.

The one notable exception is RECORD UK, whose planes were originally a very nice dark blue colour. This usually fades a bit with age but when polished up still can look like new. The original finish on most planes is a jappaned finish which is a nightmare to reproduce.

The RECORD blue has evaded all my attempts to find a decent match with most being way too bright. My local paint store cannot help me.

Is there any way one can get a paint store to match from an existing example? Ie if I take a plane in with good clean paint can they match it somehow with some accuracy?

Cheers,

Martin

Thanks guys for that useful info, will get some from Paragon today and give it a go.

Jason, funny, I had seen that Record resource once or twice before but never realised it was so comprehensive, thanks for pointing it out. I have also sold stuff to the guy….

I use Patrick Leach's 'Blood & Gore' for all things Stanley and he has become a good mate when we meet up at David Stanley Auctions a few times a year.

The hand plane market is very volatile at the moment, especially the high end, Karl Holtey, Bill Carter etc with sale prices quite depressed. Run of the mill stuff is quite bouyant however but you have to present the planes well and Record blue being 'off' has been bad for me a couple of times now so hope that this willl remedy it.

Cheers, Martin