Why are yards painted black?

[rameyke]

This may be a dumb question, but on the Syren kit, and I am sure other kits as well, the yards can be painted black or left natural.

 

My question is what was the purpose of painting them black on the real ships?  I love the look of both the natural finish and the black painted ones.  I am just curious.

 

Thanks

Ken

[druxey]

No question is dumb! I've noticed that the surrounds to hatchways (don't fall down them!) and other obstructions on deck were often painted, usually red, then black on British contemporary models. This was as a safety feature in the dark or bad weather. One could easily distinguish the dark painted areas from the light deck color. I suspect that blackening mastheads and yards were done for a similar reason: to provide visual contrast with their surroundings.

[dafi]

Or simply protection reasons?

 

XXXDAn

[JerseyCity Frankie]

An argument in favor of varnish on the spars instead of opaque paint is that varnish, being transparent, allows for visual inspection of the spar. Paint could be hiding a spot that the rot has got to.

[von stetina]

Or black paint was cheap!

 

Von Stetina

[augie]

This may be a dumb question, but on the Syren kit, and I am sure other kits as well, the yards can be painted black or left natural.

 

My question is what was the purpose of painting them black on the real ships?  I love the look of both the natural finish and the black painted ones.  I am just curious.

 

Thanks

Ken

So now the question is what finish are you going to use?  I wrestled with the issue on Syren and decided to go natural.

[Kevin]

http://naval.histofig.com/Painting-of-Napoleonic-Spanish.html

 

this is intresting, where it appears that different colures were used to define category's of class of ship

[augie]

That's interesting Kevin.  Thanks for the link.