Story of paints

I have the feeling that these Jaguar and Hudson sedan which were produced in 1956, were produced in pairs, the same day or one by one but without changing the pail of paint !It was more economical ! But which was the first serie ? I don't know :unsure:

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Hi Richard,
Never noticed that ! Jag ' s a bit darker on the red,
but the blue ' s very much the same,
are there any other similar pairs of colours on different castings out there ? Chris Warr.

Jacques (or anyone for that matter!) Can you please explain what FETTLED and TITIVATED means in regard to the masking process? Bruce

Hi Bruce, 'Fettling' is a term used in engineering, and refers to the process of removing sharp edges from cast or moulded components. In the case of Dinky Toys, this would involve the raw castings spending a period of time in a 'rumbler', a vibrating/revolving drum, part-filled with ceramic chips and water to remove most of the imperfections. 'Titivation' is a more general term, meaning 'to tidy or smarten up', and in this case refers to the hand-filing of any unwanted casting marks etc., and possibly polishing out any roughness in the castings. Kevin.

Bruce, These two words are new to me and I am glad that BinnerL13 answered your question. Where did you meet these words ? BinnerL13 Welcome to the forum of Dinky maniacs, it would be nice if you could write something about you and your collection in your profile. A deburing barrel. Solido's deburing plant. These helicoidal vibrating bowls are so noisy that the room is sound proofed or rather sound reduced with the panels hanging from the ceiling. Jacques.

dinkycollect wrote: 'Bruce, These two words are new to me and I am glad that BinnerL13 answered your question. Where did you meet these words ? Jacques.' Jacques These two words FETTLED and TITIVATED have been used in the painting process, and has something to do with the masking. Still any ideas? Kind regards Bruce

Bruce, According to Kevin, these words apply to the deburing and preparation process before bonding and painting. They are not related to mask painting. After looking in the dictionary, I agree with him. These words do not seem to be used very often. Any way, after leaving the foundry, the raw castings are not ready for painting, the sprure has to be removed and recycled, various burs have to be removed and some other bits removed and recycled into the foundry. The castings are dumped into the helicoidal vibrating bows (see my previous post) where they are mixed with some abrasiv ceramic chips. There is a ramp around the bowl and with the vibrations, the castings go up the ramp and fall into the green conveyor belt. The abrasic chips are too smal and remain in the bowl. Next the castings are washed in the rotating tumbler or duburing barrel. Then the castings are left to dry until they are painted. I think that no filing is done, except in specific cases like the ref. 547 Panhard PL 17 where the side lights had to be removed but this was probably done with a grinding wheel and the ladder for the ref 32e Fire engine on which some injectiions marks had to be removed but this was done with a belt sander machine as the martks left on the ladders show. 32e Fourgon premiers secours. After the deburing, Meccano Liverpool had ahuge machine called the bonding plant in which the castings were submitted to a phosphate treatment to make the surfaces uneven so that the paint would stick to the casting. No primer was used. Bonding or is it bonderising machine at Binns road. In the bonding plant, the castings were also washed, rinsed and dried. This is what FETTLED and TITIVATED is, these two words seem to mean about the same thing and to cover several manufacturing operations. Bruce, Does this answer your question ?

Many thanks Jacques and in particular, Kevin I knew of these being used in the casting process, but not in the painting process. I presume that the following would be correct although I was unaware that the masks were made of metal: This is from The Great Book of Dinky by The Richardsons. Kind regards Bruce

Bruce, The hand out that you are refering to is probably an article published in the Meccano Magazine some time after June 1961. This article describes the manufacturing of Dinky Toys and there are many pictures of the factory and R & D office, several pictures show the Mini Clubman. Sorry I do not have the exact date of this magazine. In the article which you have posted, fettled and titivated do not apply to the models (your question was not accurate enough) but to the masks which were getting a new coat of paint with each model painted. So the masks had to be fettled and titivated frequently as with the thickness of paint the shape of the mask changed quickly. This has been discussed before without result probably on TMT but today, you have answered the question. There are also many pictures of the factories in the Dinky Toys Encyclopaedia

Just a newcomer in this forum, I maybe have a silly request: Does a document exist where the colours are specified which were used by Mecanno for painting our beloved miniatures so that we can restore our damaged specimen?

Hi Paul Welcome to the DTCA forum As far as I know, there is no such document with the RAL colour references. There are documents indicating the colours in writing which does not mean much and some with photos of the models with each (almost) colour variations but of course the lighting of a photo can change the colour slightly.