Red split rims

[vping]

We're working on cleaning up the wheels. The wooden spokes are in decent shape with nice glossy varnish on them. The felloes have slight surface rust from sitting. We're going to mask, sand and paint black.

The split rims are in a little worse shape showing surface rust from sitting and very pitted edges from age. I figured since I have them apart, I might as well take to work to blast and paint. I noticed that the layers are silver paint on the surface, then some type of primer, then bright red paint and then a dark color or primer before bare metal.

Were wooden spoke wheels ever paint red from the factory?

[Humblej]

Demountable rim wooden spoke wheels only came painted black from the factory. 21" wood spoke wheels were available as an option from the dealer in natural finish. Rims were zinc plated or galvanized depending on manufacturer.

[Wayne Sheldon]

Red on old car wheels was a sort of a fad for awhile way back in the hobby. Just another of those silly things that got in the way of presenting early automobiles how they actually were in their day.
No big deal. Just repaint them more or less appropriately. While an actual zinc plating or hot dip galvanize would be closer to what they really were, a good silver/aluminum paint has an appropriate look and is easy to maintain.

About thirty years ago, through my job, I had an opportunity at little cost to me to have a bunch of rims hot dipped galvanized. As communications system contractors, we had to custom build special mountings for special antennas to be mounted on the roof of a high-rise building. The contract required these custom mountings be hot dip galvanized for easy long-term maintenance. The hot dip plant had a minimum order size by weight of the material to be galvanized, and the custom built mountings were not very heavy. All of a sudden, I had an opportunity to hot dip galvanize a couple hundred pounds of rusty metal at no cost! (The process didn't even require cleaning of the metal before being dipped)
I was a bit concerned about heavy coverage or globs of zinc gumming up the rims, but figured what the heck, and sent my whole pile of rims (mostly clincher rims). A few rims had some globs that needed cleaning up, but I found it was easy to do with the acetylene torch. I had one 21 inch split rim with the intact latch that turns on a rivet. I was a bit concerned about it being soldered solidly to the rim. However, a quick hit with the torch melted the zinc, and using pliers to turn the latch while it cooled worked enough of the zinc out and it remained good and work just fine.

The hot dip galvanize actually filled in a lot of deep rust pits, and made a few rims I thought were junk good enough to actually use again. I had a few that the clincher edges were way to far gone to ever run on a car. I used a couple of those to mount ancient tires on strictly for display. A couple of those to this day are hanging on my garage wall.
If I had reasonable access to a hot dip galvanize place today? I would like to do that again. But California is not friendly to industrial enterprises. The few places I knew of have long since gone away.

Just my experience working with hot dipped rims in case you have a local place that can still do that.

[vping]

Thanks. I assumed silver in color was factory and the red was added at some point.

Edge of the rim looks like it was sitting in the dirt for years so it's got some decent pitting.

We've got an old time machinist at the shop who I was showing the wheel to after I blasted it and he noticed the pitting. He said you know that you can weld those pits and proceeded to grab the wheel and tigged about 4" of it then ground it smooth.

Gives my son something else to do!!