Yellow marking on 4T chest lid???

[chosenman]

Does anyone know what the yellow disc, or, daub of paint which is commonly found at one or both ends of the 4T chest lid means??

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[Gil Boyd]

Must admit, I have seen lots of chests over the years including mine which didn't have anything other than the tell tale MOD stencil wordage written on it and the S/N on the ends. I would suggest it probably was just a unit colour coding to signify it was a sniper rifle in a pile of like minded chests IMHO

[Peter Laidler]

Great yellow daubs of paint on the butt usually indicated ZF to us. In Armoured Regiments it indicated which Squadron the vehicle came from. Could this be the same here. Although I never saw that method used in the Infantry who'd have No4's

[chosenman]

No Gil, I'm looking at refurbing a case and I've been looking at countless images of chests so as to get the colour and basic markings correct and I've noticed a significant number have either a yellow disc painted on the top at one or both ends, or just a simple daub of yellow paint. I have another chest which has the daub. A brush has been dipped in the tin then splodged leaving the yellow signature.

[breakeyp]

I can't speak for the military but in the car making business, a daub of paint on a part indicated it had been inspected and found correct.

[Peter Laidler]

Could this yellow 'paint' daub be the old gas check paint. It turned a slightly different colour when subject to a couple of the cold war gasses.

My brother had an old 1945 Bedford and when he was stripping it he found a tray that originally fitted horizontally under the drivers front screen and this had a thick daubed on yellow paint covering. This was a gas check marker. Just an oblique thought bearing in mind that plenty of Ordnance stores were stored outside but under loose covers

In the UK car making business (Paul, thread 5) paint daubed on car panels was just the standard paint finish. They called it 'orange-peel effect' but that was just a euphemism for poor quality finish

[Gil Boyd]

Simon,
I know in the post war days, the yellow disc was evident on Military trucks, and I supposed to put unit numbers therein if needed, is this the same perhaps for chests during WW2+?

[smle addict]

Pulled my transit chests out of the garage. One case has the yellow spots referred to by chosenman. The second chest (no pics) does not have the yellow.

[Flying10uk]

I was thinking gas indication paint which Peter has already mentioned. I have only ever heard of it being used on vehicles and I was led to believe that the "normal practice" was to paint a rectangle of the special paint on the top of the bonnet which was clearly visible to the driver so that he could see if it changed colour. I understood it to be of a matt yellowish colour. This is only what I have been told and I don't recall ever having seen photographic proof of this. This was at a time when vehicles tended to have much longer bonnets than they do today.

[Sentryduty]

While not immediately relevant, with our NBC chemical detector paper we could get a false positive when high % DEET insect repellent was applied, perhaps a little swab with a similar chemical could reveal if the paint reacts or if it's simply an inventory colour code.