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Dan-San,
I think you have mis-read my post, I am not claiming it was soot I'm simply passing on Allan's views based on his thorough inspection of the fabric samples. Having said that you will notice though that the fuselage cross white areas are quite grey but there maybe other reasons for this.
I do not know what to think about the rudder as I believe it is quite possible that the one fitted may have been a replacement given that it does not show the same progression of markings changes that the other markings have been through.
On the subject of soot these rotary powered aircraft got a fair dose of this as well as the oil given the difficulty of constantly changing the benzine regulator with altitude and power settings.
There is a good shot in Imrie's Triplane book showing the underside of a crashed example along with a notation to observe the soot. I would not be surprised if 425/17 arrived painted the way I have discussed previously in this thread. If that was the case and the aircraft had been flown for some time and then at a later stage the underside was over-painted red, along with much of the rest of the aircraft (this would explain the over-painting of the various stencils with a thin layer), then it is entirely possible that soot was picked up during the repainting process.
A possible explanation for soot not being in the white areas is that they were touched up after the red paint had dried and more care might have been taken given it was white paint (note the cross on the bottom wing had never been completed which shows that the red was finished - as you would expect - prior to the white application).
If the repainting started on the lower surfaces then the paint may have been contaminated and transfered to other areas (Allan noted less soot the higher the samples were in the aircraft). I know there are many maybes in this explanation but its worth considering.
Langdon
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