Sort OT: Howard Hughes Baby Blue Paint on Machinery?

I understand Howard Hughes's favorite color was Baby Blue, and he required that all machines at Hughes Tool/Aerospace were all repainted this color. I have a Tree mill and a Monarch EE Tool cabinet, that when stripped down revealed this color, which I assume at one time was owned by the Hughes Companies. Anybody else come across this..just curious?

I dunno. Are the lathe and mill very reclusive and prone to conspiracy theories?

I spent some time at a local ACE hardware getting a can of paint mixed for my choice for painting machinery. It is blue, but not baby blue. More of a medium dark blue.

If not a billionaire, could that at least make me a millionaire some day?

Lots of companies might have used baby blue paint. If you're looking for a Howard Hughes tie-in, look inside the machines for jars of urine.

EPAIII said:

I spent some time at a local ACE hardware getting a can of paint mixed for my choice for painting machinery. It is blue, but not baby blue. More of a medium dark blue.

If not a billionaire, could that at least make me a millionaire some day?

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Almost certainly

As the previous owner of your Monarch cabinet, I can give you a small history of it. It was originally sold with my 10ee to IBM in the Hudson Valley of NY. My 10ee has a coat of the same heinous blue paint in its layers- fortunately not on top. When i bought them they were from a shop in Pittsfield Mass. I have no information on its life between IBM and Pittsfield. Date of Manufacture was 1952, so there could have been other stops along the way.

Interesting about Howard Hughes.

Peter

My Tree mill came from SoCal, and the dealer said it came to him as a lot from Hughes. I think I got the color story from him, after I commented that was not the Tree official color. So there's that. The cabinet is exactly the same hue as my mill. Seems to me Baby Blue is not a common machine shop color. Btw, your ex cabinet is getting the full restoration, but not in baby blue. I'll post a pic in the Monarch section.

That colour of blue was the company colour at one of the companies I worked at. It's not that unusual.

Regards Tyrone.

I worked in a shop that was divided into aisles, each was about 150 feet wide by 600 feet long. Each aisle was responsible for its own people and tools, and each aisle had its own color....tools were painted red, blue, green etc. That way, you could tell at a glance if a tool was in the wrong aisle (presumably because someone had stolen it from some other aisle). If you saw a guy drive by in a cart with a red 1" impact, he'd better be a red aisle guy, or else...

That worked great for a short time, until people figured out they could steal a tool, give it a quick repaint, and be on their way. It didn't help that the tool crib would often repair a red tool, repaint it blue, then redistribute it to the blue aisle. This meant you had tools that were legitimately repainted, and others that weren't. After a few years, most tools had 7 or 8 layers of different colored paint and looked like hell.

I always liked blue for machines. I rebuilt my Parks 4 X 12" wood planer in 1971. I never considered any other color. I still have it and it's still blue.

I seem to recall that Chevrolet used blue also.

Newman109 said:

I always liked blue for machines. I rebuilt my Parks 4 X 12" wood planer in 1971. I never considered any other color. I still have it and it's still blue.


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That was " our " colour. All the machines in the shop were painted just like that. I didn't like it too much myself, Big vertical borers or plano-mills etc, the large stuff especially, don't look right in my opinion. Just saying.

Regards Tyrone.

All Hurco mills were baby blue from the factory well up into the 1990's. Only one I ever saw that was a different color was one we purchased from Hewlett Packard that was HPs baby puke olive drab- obviously a factory paint job that HP paid for.

Newman109 said:

I always liked blue for machines. I rebuilt my Parks 4 X 12" wood planer in 1971. I never considered any other color. I still have it and it's still blue.


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I've worked at 3 different Aerospace companies who used that same color for anything that needed painting.

Was at a customers yesterday who wants a new frame for a lamination line. Their old line, exact same blue color again.

That's probably why Amada's are all red (at least the ones I've seen) Somebody at Amada probably said "If anybody paints a machine that shade of blue their getting fired!"

The first mill I bought, a 36" table J-head B-port was baby or powder blue. Hughes had several shops in the area, I bought it from a guy that knew little about the machine, less about machines in general!

Steve

There is/was a refinery in Aruba...for years the main plant engineer held the belief that 'rust is the best preservative.' We, and other vendors, were shipping multi-million dollar pieces of equipment without any paint at all. As part of the manufacturing process, some pieces were primed but other than that, no paint. It was very odd to see a machine being shipped already rusting away. Keep in mind, Aruba is not exactly Arizona when it comes to being salt and humidity free. The part that was ignored was the rust made it a wicked PITA to do any work, and no one wanted to even touch up against anything.

I've seen a lot of machinery coming out of the military that was baby blue, no idea if any of it was tied to HH. Never cared for the color myself.

What possesses MTB, resellers and owners to paint equipment the hideous colors (especially pastel) they do it beyond me. It's like a competition to see who can pick the ugliest color. The only classic color I'm ok with is grey but even then why they don't pick a darker shade is beyond me. When I see fresh paint I start looking at everything except the paint!

I have yet to see a machine painted that the effort wouldn't have been better spent working on a different area of the machine.

EPAIII said:

I spent some time at a local ACE hardware getting a can of paint mixed for my choice for painting machinery. It is blue, but not baby blue. More of a medium dark blue.

If not a billionaire, could that at least make me a millionaire some day?

Click to expand...

If it matches USN "flag blue" it might make you an ex Grumman Tigercat jock?

But the probability is fairly low. I only ever had the privilege of knowing exactly ONE of 'em, personally.

Helluva guy. Offered to run a finger up my ass first time we met!

Flight surgeon, LONG years head of it for United Airlines before retiring to private practice - mostly FAA physicals.

Doc sez: "FAA doesn't require it, but at your age, you SHOULD have a prostate check every year anyway. And I don't charge extra for it."

Well. I wuz Army. Mistrustful lot on certain things, we be.

So when any sailor offers to check six? And not CHARGE EXTRA for it?

I jest told him he'd be in deep shit in more ways than one if'n I discovered he had BOTH hands on my shoulders!

Response?

"Even that isn't so bad. Unless you start LIKING it!"

World is a duller place without pilots who could make dozens of landings to PROVE the Tigercat could too be operated off a carrier.

It just needed pilots good enough to not die at it and f**k-up the island, elevators, or flght deck. He was every bit that good.

You did say "Off Topic"?

HRH, Jr "baby blue" could give a body Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?

Meanwhile, back at the mini-roller, spray, or even brush?

Benjamin-Moore Super-Spec is available blended to just about any colour they have or you can find a code for. There's one serious good paint that is also easy to use and low hassle, overall. Cheaper than first appears, it does the job so well and can easily be touched-up

No "extra charge", for that "free benefit", either, y'see!

Whereas... some of them lesser paints, all yah get is a pain in the ass of prep work, then the deep shit of a job needing earlier do-over.



Mind .. if I were even 15 years younger, I might try Ditzler and the 2005 Jaguar XJ8 code for "Metallic Mica Slate", expertly clear-coated. Refined, genteel elegance. Not brash flash.

And it surely has hung onto the aluminium really well, all these years.

Many high school shop machines get brush painted green with yellow control handles.
Bill D.