Good afternoon, I have a question for you guys, Does anyone have a picture, sign, or decal of a Blackhawk Ethyl?
I bought a National B-38 yesterday, and from what I can make out is a decal on the front that says Blackhawk Ethyl.
But I can't make anything else out. Did a search and have not been able to find anything really, did find a picture
in the archives of OG of a Blackhawk gas globe but does not look like what is on the decal. Thanks for any help!!
Brian

I did some research on the bird related brands not too long ago, I was interested in Golden Eagle gas. I've never seen Blackhawk before. I zoomed into the image to check it out. I can make out BLAC - - AWK. The center portion also says something thats not the typical ethyl logo. I'm assuming bottom says ethyl, hard to tell.

In the past I've taken the thinnest paper I can find and made a rubbing with a pencil lead to figure these things out. M ight work on this one,

- Paul

Hey Paul, Thanks for the reply, It deffinetly says Blackhawk on the top, and Ethyl on bottom but like you said the Ethyl logo is different
than what you normally see, it looks like the (sun burst) around the triangle logo but I cant make out what words are in the triangle,
if that makes sense.

Brian

Definitely be interesting to see what they used for their main logo. Might be really cool.

That is what I was thinking, at some point it was made into a Conoco pump, so I was going to leave as that
until I seen that decal painted over now it has my interest. The ad glass panels look like somebody removed
the original name when it became Conoco. I will post pictures in Buy of the week.

Brian

Brian,

Not sure anyone here will know this brand, you might get lucky and someone remembers it, hopefully! If you are curious and want to dig more, there are newspaper archive websites that go back to the 1930s. I've used newspaper.com before and found maybe 10 ads related to "golden eagle gasoline". If the key terms are uncommon enough, like "blackhawk gasoline" or "blackhawk gas station" probably is, might get some hits from gas station adds in old newspapers without it being overwhelming. They may have their logo in the ad. Takes a little time to get used to how there database works, but not too hard. If I remember correctly its organized by states or regions. Newspaper.com has a one week free sign up and gets really expensive after that, so make sure you cancel your subscription!!! Probably take you an hour or two of searching.

Anyway just an FYI.

- Paul

The Ethyl logo is fairly standard - even if it's the EGC version.

And I believe there's enough detail left to reproduce the decal.

You'd just need to figure out the outer background color and the color of the lettering.

The lettering looks like it matches the Sweney Sky Hawk . . .

Sky Hawk / Black Hawk?

I'd be interested in recreating it for you if you want.

Later . . .

Jim

Not sure if this is the same company, but there was a Blackhawk Oil Company out of Waterloo, Iowa in the late '20's. I'll get a picture of a map and post it a bit later.

Thanks Alan I would appreciate that!!

Brian

Neat map! I'll see if I can dig anything else up.

Not my can! just saved the picture from a long time ago.

I know Faultless Oil and Red Ball gasoline are typically associated with the Hawkeye Oil Company out of Mason City and Waterloo. I did a quick search and found out why here:
https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4873&context=palimpsest

In 1926 Hawkeye Oil became Blackhawk Oil, under new management and a new slogan, All over Iowa. A year later the company was bought out by Mid-Continent Petroleum Corporation (later known as Diamond or Sunray D-X).

Based on this I don't think its the same company as the one from the pump. Who knows?

another example .. ...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-Hawkeye-Faultless-Motor-Oil-Can-/313417645827

None of the shown examples have lettering that looks anything like the decal remains.

The name might match the decal, but due to where this pump was found and the lettering used on the decal and the Sweney Sky Hawk lenses - I still think this is a as yet unknown Sweney image.

Later . . .

Jim

Alan, That is a neat map with cool graphics, also a good article on the Iowa oil companies.
Thank you for sharing the info, and Randy also.

Brian

Yeah, I was thinking similar, may not be it, based on the dissimilar fonts. Be nice to know what it says in that triangle, its something weird, not ethyl.

Here's what I'm seeing of the 'ETHYL' lettering on the decal.

The lettering seems to be more blocky/wide than usual for an EGC Ethyl logo - but there really weren't any real hard and fast requirements for the lettering back then.

You just had to have certain words in a certain order to make Ethyl Corporation happy.

I'll be able to tell more when I have better photos or a rubbing of the actual remains.

Later . . .

Jim

This is other side cleaned up a little better, can kind of see the geaphics a little better.
will do pencil rub tommorow. Thanks for all the replies!!
Brian

Bass Master and I have been going back and forth with this for the last couple of days.

He mentioned that the pump had some badly modified ad glass that came with it and sent me this image.

Well, that opened a whole new direction for the Blackhawk image.

This ad glass was used by a unknown company named Feldman Petroleum Products.

Up until now there was only one know example of glass from this company and no company info was known.

Here is an ad glass panel that hasn't been ruined.

So with a new company name, I did an internet search and discovered that Feldman was out of Chicago.

Here is the only reference I can find on the web.

And it shows a Blackhawk image . . .

Bass Master has done a pencil rubbing of the old pump decal and is mailing it to me.

Once I have it, I'll toss some art together and post it here for comments.

Later . . .

Jim

After searching for hours last night this is all I found other than what Jim posted of the
gas can, it came from a patent article stating the Company has been using the logo since
1934, the article was dated March 3 1936.

You guys are probably on the right track. I typed this into newspaper.com and most of the hits I'm getting are in Illinois and Wisconsin. I'd dig deeper but I've already used my 7-day free trial at that site so its just showing me tidbits. I'm from Wisconsin so your definitely perking my interest!

...and here is Feldman Petroleum, bunch of Chicago tribune hits in the 1940s. Cool logo by the way you guys found! Could possibly be that BlackHawk Oil was purchased by Feldman Petroleum, that's kind of the vibe Im getting (well total wild guess who knows!)

Brian did a rubbing of his original decal remnants.

He also carefully sanded off the overlaying paint to reveal the colors underneath.

Then I did a tracing of his rubbing, scanned it into the computer and recreated the decal as close as I could.

Here is the final product.

Later . . .

Jim

Looks really good Jim

Yes, JIM did a Great job recreating this decal, and was a pleasure dealing with again!!

Brian

Since Feldman used an 'Indianhead' image on the other items we found online - I mocked up a 'REGULAR' version just for fun.

I used the Ethyl lettering as a guide to create the 'REGULAR' lettering for this image and created a (much) nicer 'head' logo for the center than what was shown on the web.

As I mentioned, this was just me making a fantasy image based on a real company.

Later . . .

Jim

I like the look of it!

ditto .. ...

Looks very nice, probably very close to what they actually did. We’ll have to keep an eye out for pictures of stations.