P37 pouches from khaki to olive drab

Hi,

I somewhat recently bought two old p37 pouches. Sadly I didn't take any before pictures, but I will describe them as best as I can. They were the standard MII/MIII basic pouches in khaki. Over the khaki was a lot of green blanco which I assume was dutch. I couldn't really get the pouches clean so I decided to restore them. As a replacement of the somewhat rare blanco I used olive green shoe cream. It was worked in with a paintbrush with short bristles. I got most of my info from Blancoandbull.com


I like how the colour has turned out, somehow there is a bit of a difference between the two pouches, but it doesn't really show.


In comparison with an original blancoed strap the colour matches well enough, a bit more green but assembled this wouldn't make a lot of difference.



Here a picture with the original khaki still inside the pouch.

I think it makes a good addition for my post war webbing set. What do you guys think?

They look pretty sharp. With some weathering, the colours would probably resemble the original pieces even more closely.

I've been wondering, people have been calling those green cans green shoe cream, but are they really not just actual Blanco? I mean have they ever pasted their boots green?

Those green cans are actual dutch Blanco. It has some similarities with shoe cream, I believe it was based on the use of black shoe cream to protect web gear with the tank units of the british army.

Yes, I agree, the green tins are certainly blanco. The tins are the same shape/size as the brown shoe polish tins, but painted a different colour. Earlier types of blanco, I think, came in paper wrappers.

The dutch army started using the old powdered Blanco. I think this was packaged in paper. Later they changed to the shoe-polish style in tin cans. That is what I've tried to replicate. I'm still trying to get the 'shine' out; I'm now trying to add in something gritty to my repro-blanco. At this moment I've added flour, and I think this is working quite well.

It is possible that the original blanco also had some shine when it was freshly applied, and then through time it became flatter.

The Canadian Army used a very similar shade of blanco during the 1950s and 1960s on WE 51 items. I have managed to build a couple of complete sets that match pretty well. The stuff is really heavily applied.