Pre-WWII web slings, common, uncommon, rare or unobtainium?

[Garandy]

Just finished working on 15 slings I bought as a bit of a pig in a poke. About half were dyed or painted and about a third are longer, presumably Bren slings. All unmarked on the brass.

I tried a bath of Rit Color Remover and it took some of the color out, but not nearly enough. My blue/black slings are mainly still blue/black though one looks like it has a disease of some kind as it's a bit blotchier now.

Working on the rust stains next........

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[Strangely Brown]

I tried a bath of Rit Color Remover and it took some of the color out, but not nearly enough. My blue/black slings are mainly still blue/black though one looks like it has a disease of some kind as it's a bit blotchier now.

On entering boys service in 1966 we were all issued with new 37 Pattern webbing (except rifle slings which were kept in the armoury) the next step was to dye them black with a commercial dye; the smell has stayed with me to this day!
Once dyed black we then used Kiwi boot polish to give the webbing a deeper shiny black, those of us lucky enough to find we had been issued with webbing that contained black metal buckles were then told to exchange them for brass buckled webbing and repeat the dye and boot polish regime.

Garandy, is it any wonder the black is difficult to remove!

[Flying10uk]

I tried a bath of Rit Color Remover and it took some of the color out, but not nearly enough. My blue/black slings are mainly still blue/black though one looks like it has a disease of some kind as it's a bit blotchier now.

It all depends on what was applied to the webbing in the first place as to what can be removed now. Sometimes all that is required is water and a nailbrush.

I do have several tins of what I believe was marketed as an alternative to blanco and which I believe had the consistency similar to boot polish. I've not opened the tins but I think once it was applied to webbing it was on there for good.