My son (he's 12) and I are arguing/debating this tonight. We just picked up a late 30's early 40's Radio King that was originally silver and blue duco that someone had painted red. I removed all the paint today and prepped the shell for something...my son wants to either just seal the wood and leave it natural or put a light stain on it. I want to either repaint the original duco paint scheme or paint it gloss black which I believe was a color choice back then..I'm leaning towards black.

Cya,

Mike

[COLOR="DarkRed"]I think September must be DUCO MONTH here at VDF !!!!!

Cool Dude

If the finish is really going or gone, yeah....you can usually pick 'em up cheap and either remove the paint and refinish 'em in some sort of wood finish (stain/lacquer or go with a multiple-coat oil finish like tung oil or such)....it's just that sometimes, shells inteded for painting or wrapping didn't have the best seams or grains going for 'em because...well...they were gonna get covered. Another issue which arises is that sometimes it almost impossible to get all of the paint out of the grain.

...Or yes, you can wrap the shells. But BEWARE....if you wrap 'em, you will likely need to choose a thin wrap like a Pearl or such....because thicker wraps like Sparkle or Glitter can cause head fit problems.

Duco shells were a tad wider in diameter than wrapped shells back then....since they were never intended to have wrap. So....you gotta see how much play the heads have before you go ahead and wrap.[/COLOR]