Trying to repaint your Dawn vice and not sure which colour will match the original? Find out what we have tried below. We are trying to find an off-the-shelf tin or spraycan that will be a close match for the originals.
From the factory Dawn’s cast iron vices were red, the SG vices were hammertone green and the cast steel vices were a dark-ish blue. There are some exceptions to this – the SG Workshop vice doesn’t ever appear to have been produced in green, only red – but by and large it’s accurate. Having said that, I’ve never seen a cast steel vice anything but blue from factory or a cast iron vice that started out as anything but red.
Note: Dawn have told me that the official colours are currently Pantone colour code PMS7420 and/or Dulux velvet cape-P48E9. The SG (super grade) green is Wattyl hammertone green. Note: I have seen some of the early SG Workshop vices that appear to have come from factory in red rather than the now-common green – can anyone confirm that?
Evan from Dawn also reports that many of the pre-70s vices were painted in Dulux Red Box, colour code S04F9.
Dawn Vices have been a variety of colours over the years, depending on what material the vice was made from and probably a number of other factors. I put a 2015-made vice next to a 2017-made vice and they were close in colour but definitely not identical, so attempting to match “the” Dawn colour is not going to be successful – there’s a wide range of factory colours. The older ones appear to be a lighter red, where the more current red is darker. For the red found on the older ones we have tried White Knight Gloss Indian Red – here it is next to a 2017-built Dawn vice, which is notably more maroon than the older colours:
Here it is on the repainted vice:
That’s not exactly a close match to the current colour but it is closer to what they used to be like, judging by the paint colour on the underside and inside areas of some of the vices I have had.
Now, we have a fabricated 150mm Dawn here that we have tried another colour on to more closely match the colour of current Dawn vices:
You can see the original colour of the fabricated vice on the underside here – it’s definitely a much lighter red than the current vices:
Here’s another choice – this one is rather a lot more jolly than the original colour of the 6SP:
Very… fire-engine red?
Tim Murphy sent in a vice he did in Rustoleum Gloss Colonial Red:
This one I had some automotive colour matched paint made up – the recipe for a 500ml tin is M25 460ml and M07 40ml. The same ratio should work for a larger/smaller tin – 500ml is enough for several vices. The local paint match place assured me that most places should be able to make that tint work as it’s a common system, though I haven’t tried anyone else to verify that. The colour on a vice:
As far as the cast steel vices go Lachlan Anderson has used Dupli-Colour’s Ford Dark Blue to good effect: