Ha, ha. And Mike’s your man if you need new blades, for example if you see cracks developing around the rivets.
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Wait, is that now evidence for painted blade tips?
We had it the other way round.
That’ll buff out. Send it to Nick. 
Sure. Enclose a nice bottle of single malt along with it. 
RUN IT!!!..
My theory: Dirt encrusted corrosion of the blade tips. They were bare aluminium and exposed. The originally painted areas have shed their coating, which preserved them.
It makes sense that the engineers wouldn’t want an uneven layer of paint on the blade tips messing with balance. It makes no sense they’d apply paint only to the blade tips.
Guess I’d best strip mine, as you suggest. I’ll put it on tomorrow’s docket.
*Preeeeeetty sure a layer of paint, on one blade, will not sensibly affect the balance of a relatively-low speed fan.
Well, they do spin upwards of 5000 rpm.
Rob,
You have pointed out something about this fan (the black painted blade tips, instead of a black painted centre and unpainted tips) that I hadn’t even noticed before.
All I know is that I’m sure I didn’t paint this fan myself.
Now I have to go and take a closer look at the paint on that fan.
Yep… and that layer of paint ain’t gonna make a hill of beans difference in balance.
So this was aesthetic?
Or is it that smoother blade surfaces deflect air more efficiently? Bare aluminum vs. drippy black
Ostensibly, the silver tips were for safety: in a dark engine compartment, with a spinning fan, silver is more visible. Margaret’s fan blades are red…
As you can see one blade has shed its red, and I sense no imbalance.
Still, the engineers put a lot of thought into that cooling fan, the original cast aluminum design having failed to deliver. The balance pieces likely address any vibration related concerns. Any original picture I’ve seen has the fan tips unpainted, most often without a masking line. Can’t figure out why.
Nor why we”re discussing paint on fan blades.
Nothing on Netflix??
Edit: but I do buy into the safety angle. Makes good sense.
Yea… but I’m getting antsy. That’s why I’ve volunteered to do food delivery for my district, and Meals on Wheels.
I’m not good at just sitting around, eating pie, and being beautiful.
I’m not @Erica_Moss…
Hope you saved one of them N95s 
20 of them. That should spell me.
Yeah. Be careful. It’s out there and spreading. A face shield and N95 wouldn’t be a bad idea. Good on you for volunteering, Paul.
Cool, gloves too. If you’re delivering in my neighborhood, I like cinnamon apple pie…no freaking raisins!
I’ll see what I can do.
Near as I can determine, early fans (going back to '34 anyway) had the spider painted black before the blades were attached. At some point they decided to paint the spider after the blades were attached, and chose to do it by just masking the blade tips. Both methods are pictured in the Mark V manual.
The aesthetics and turbulent air flow characteristics thus improved by this modification of production methods are so intuitively obvious and of such vital importance that no further explanation should be necessary to intelligent forward thinking people. 