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Kingsman

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Status Updates posted by Kingsman

  1. You may perhaps have noticed that there's been a lot of debate recently about the colour of tank tracks, both the virgin metal and the oxide.  Stimulated mostly by me, I have to say, and I feel like something of a voice in the wilderness but people are beginning to catch on.  Using silvery shades, and more recently graphite, has just become the norm over time.  Everyone assumes that worn steel is silvery without looking at the actual color of the metal.  High manganese steel used by most countries for most all-metal tracks since the late 1930s is a solid goldy-brown colour and cannot possibly be silver or metallic grey.  Even WW1 tank tracks were a very dark brown metal, probably from face-hardening.

     

    None of the available products really captures the metal colours correctly: they are mostly shades of metallic brown, often with a goldy-yellow tint from the manganese content.  They certainly aren't the steel or graphite commonly used by modellers.  They also don't rust to conventional rusty shades, also because of the manganese.  All of the available track colors seem to be dark browns.

     

    There is a similar problem with armour plate, which is also generally a dark metallic brown and also not silvery or graphite-y.  A primer colour for this would IMHO be really useful, as would something for chipping and wear.  Current "chipping colours" are mostly just dark brown, and pencils are just graphite.

     

    I've contacted a number of "big name" (no disrespect intended) paint companies but none are interested.  So much for Real Colours (most of which are off)!  Is this something that you might be interested in taking forward?

    1. Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies

      Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies

      Hi,

       

      I will think on this to see if I can think of a way to do it. There are a few facets to this and desired behaviours.

       

      Interesting problem though, and I will give it some attention and try some experiments.

    2. Kingsman

      Kingsman

      I have a load of photos I've taken that illustrate my point(s), which I can send you.  But the metallic shade is hard to capture and flash or light glare can be deceptive.  I have one where something I know is gold-brown looks silver and something I know to be silvery looks black!  Period B/W photos are of course useless.

       

      A trip round Bovington would be extremely informative.  I'm sure that you would also be able to request access to the Conservation Centre reserve collection, as a product manufacturer.  It would be good if we could meet up there together so that I could point things out.  I'm currently in Bristol but am hoping to be in living Weymouth from November.  People say not to trust museum exhibits.  True to a certain extent, especially the environment for corrosion development.  But the virgin metal colour doesn't change.

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