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VVS colours in the Great Patriotic War


Bassplayer

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If the 'parts' refer to measure of weight, Sir, such as 15 pounds soot (lampblack), 65 pounds ocher, and 25 pounds zinc white, it might well work. Lampblack is very light in weight, and ocher very heavy, so the volume of 15 pounds of soot would be far greater than that of even 65 pounds of ocher.

Interesting point, OM, but my question then becomes - if the soot is so "powerful" for want of another word, why the ocher and zinc white? As binding agents or to improve adhesion? Perhaps for increased durability. I certainly don't know. I know VVS colours reasonably well, but I don't know chemistry very well.

Regards,

Jason

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Am I the only one to find strange that a composition with 60% ochre and 25% zinc white is named as AMT-6 black?

Regards

Massimo

Depends what the "ochre" pigment is. See my post # 246. As mentioned in another thread a special night black was made for the Luftwaffe where the bulk of the colour - 21% - was 'caput mortuum' (which is haematite iron oxide - a dark purple-brown - but in that case in combination with manganese dioxide), plus 1.8% zinc yellow and 1.5% oxide black pigments.

From the list of "ochre" pigments given above those dark purplish-browns could be included in what was clearly a very broad category of browns.

Nick

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Nick, that's supposedly already been done with the AKAN line of paints, which were compared with a well-preserved edition of the Albom Nakrasok. I don't know if you're familiar with this book, but it was published in 1948 and contained, amongst other paints/colours, swatches of the aviation paints used during the GPW. The feeling amongst many modellers, including myself, is that the resulting AKAN colours, especially the acrylics, look too dark on scale models. However, they may be correct for fresh paint on the full-sized aeroplanes. "Scale effect", perhaps? From what I've read, what was done regarding the paints at the factory is that they were given two samples, or "etalons", and their colour needed to fall within that rather narrow range. As long as they did this, the paint was considered acceptable. I'm afraid I don't know how much the actual chemistry were standardised.

Regards,

Jason

There are several possible factors. Paint swatches preserved away from light can actually darken as the binder yellows with thermal ageing but there can be chemical interactions too. Field-size metameric failure occurs because the relative proportions of the three cone types in the retina vary from the center of the visual field to the periphery, so that colours that match when viewed as small, centrally fixated areas (as on FS 595b chips for example) may appear different when presented as large colour areas. In many industrial applications, large field colour matches are used to define colour tolerances. I can't speak for Akan's matching not having seen the original swatches compared to their paints but 'scale colour' could be a factor when applying them to a small model.

And that can be tricky when the full-size colours are dark as I know from Japanese Navy greens where attempts to introduce 'scale colour' can result in over bright, over verdant greens that might look nice but do not represent the "deep green black" appearance of the real aircraft very well. If the original colour swatches were measured it would be possible to express them in defined colour terms such as Munsell which would establish the true degree of darkness.

I was just interested in the pigments of AMT-1 possibly giving a clue as to its appearance but from the information available that doesn't seem viable.

Nick

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One thing I can tell you about "Light Brown", Nick is that there were two versions of it. AMT-1 was a nitrocellulose lacquer applied to wooden and mixed-construction aircraft (such as the Il-2), whereas A-21M was an oil enamel that was applied to all-metal aircraft (such as the Tu-2). Although the two versions were close in colour when new, the oil varnish of the A-21M was yellow, making A-21M appear more yellow as opposed to the AMT-1, which had a little bit of grey to it. This slightly more yellow colour could be noted even on the newly-painted A-21M, and became even more pronounced with age.

Regards,

Jason

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Thanks Jason

In fact nitrocellulose lacquers yellow too (amongst other things) and Dupont didn't solve this problem until the mid 1950s with the introduction of acrylic binders. Nitrocellulose lacquers could also be used on wood or metal and were commonly used in the automobile and aircraft industries.

Nick

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  • 2 months later...

Hi,

I report here a post from:http://sovietwarplanes.com/board/index.php?topic=1699.msg13583#msg13583 about AMT-1 and other colors.


I've received some interesting documents from Andrey Averin. They make some light on some controversal shades.
Here is a page from a manual that gives the limit shades of AMT-1
on-amt-1.jpg
here is a scan of a page of chips referred from the manual.
AMT-1av.jpg
Note the strong variability: so, both the greyish shade and the brownish one are acceptable matches (even if the greyest shade looks deteriorated)
Here another manual gives the limit shades of A-21m and A-28m
on-A21m-and-A28m.jpg
and here are the limit shades of A-21m
a-21mav.jpg
again, a strong variability including greenish shades
and A-28m
a-28m.jpg
that are consistent with the blue shade of AMT-7 and A-28g, and not with the duck egg blue of the Nakrasok Alboom that is presumably altered or perhaps indicative of a stronger variability.
Regards
Massimo
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Hello!

Thank you messieurs Averin and Tessitori for very interesting colour samples.

Seems there is some kind of "ketchup effect" going on with these soviet colour etalons and numbers after the MiG-15 colour discussion at this forum: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234949599-mig-15-korean-war-camo-colours/page-2

One can find the even the AII colour etalon numbers from this scalemodels.ru -forum post some years back ("Цветов НЦ-5133 и НЦ-5134"):

http://scalemodels.ru/modules/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17492

AII (later НЦ-5134) type paints were (and are still?) needed for (natural) fabric covered pieces. Over AI (НЦ-551) dope. Also the AMT (later НЦ-5133г, НЦ-5133м) are mentioned in the Soviet Estonian metal surface painting handbook from 1969 for use on fabric surfaces - not mentioned as aviation dopes.

Cheers,

Kari

Edited by Kari Lumppio
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Hi Kari,

the table on AII colors looks particulary interesting, thank you for having posted it. I hope that Andrey will find chips of some of those colors.

I have seen the interesting colors catalogue shown on the topic of MiG-15. Now it would be good to identify the use of those colors. If so, one could obtain an useful manual on the painting of Soviet/Russian planes and armoured vehicles.

Regards

Massimo

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Thank you for that Massimo, given all the variables of photos, scans and monitors it does seem that AMT-1 could be more like the AKAN colours (left hand 924), I still prefer the sandy colours, though the range that those samples give look like they could accommodate both ! Looking at the ranges between the samples on 924 and 935 there seems to lots of scope to choose from.

Cheers

Den

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