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Color help


Spitfires Forever

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Hello friends

havent posted in quite a while but need some advice. Now that Testors has for the most part eliminated their MM line of enamels I find myself in the land of acrylics, where my problem has been the fast drying time for an old man who paints slow and deliberate. Anyway, my question is what Tamiya color is closest to MM dark glossy blue, or 15042 if I remember the FS number correctly. I want to do a nice dark glossy sea blue on a circa 1945 Hellcat. If I have to start using acrylics then a basic spray job is in order. Are acrylics ever glossy, or is a gloss coat necessary? I know that the vast majority of you guys have been using acrylics for years but this old dog needs to learn a few new tricks out of pure necessity. Well, any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers

SA

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Hi  Randy

 

if you still like enamels,  I'd ask where Sovereign paints can be obtained in the US, ah, here

https://www.hbhobbies.com/

 

here's the USN set

https://www.sovereignhobbies.co.uk/products/us-navy-wwii-pacific-colourset

 

note, what used to be simple, that GSB was GSB, is not the case,  there is a wartime color,  Glossy Sea Blue ANA623, and the the late 40's this changed, still being called GSB, but this matches  FS 15402 . 

 

 

On 31/12/2016 at 14:42, Dana Bell said:

There are a couple of other reasons the model paint manufacturers have had problems matching the Sea Blues.  Most are working from the FS595 chips, which never accurately matched all three versions of the wartime colors.  The other problem is that the formula for ANA 623 Glossy Sea Blue changed in 1947/48.  The original color faded to quickly and was replaced with more resilient pigments.  When the US Navy gave modelers the old stocks of ANA paint chips in the 1960s/70s, some of us got the 1944 card-stock chip of ANA 623, while others got the 1948 metal replacement chips.  I can well remember the arguments back then, arguments that arose because we were working from different standards!

 

Cheers,

 

 

Dana

 

and

 

If you want to carry on with acylics, I don't know if there are good matches available.  IIRC @David Hhas posted  up mixes for GSB in acrylics somewhere. 

HTH?

 

 

 

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Tamiya recommend their XF-17 for a Dark Sea Blue. It’s not strictly accurate as a color but it’s as close as most model paints if you’re going to weather on top of it. I prefer Gunze’s GSB for a fresh scheme but it’s hard ($$$) to get here in SoMD, whereas Tamiya is readily available at HobbyTown. 

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Thanks Greenshirt, and as always, Troy comes to the rescue with abundant sources. You would be my first choice for an appointment to Scotland Yard! As usual I manage to find a new can of worms to open up whenever I post a query. My local hobby store is Brookhurst Hobbies, our version of Hannants so to speak, which is fairly well stocked but not quite the level of Hannants I imagine. For me the cost of shipping, especially from the UK is a major deterrent but I will check the paint sets suggested by Troy from US sources. I really should give acrylics a try regardless, I might even like them better if I gave them a chance, seems to be the future anyway, besides, I get complaints from family members about the paint smell, even when I use a thinner that has no smell at all. What if I experimented and used the Tamiya colors and tried putting in a drop or two of gloss black? I am not concerned with extreme accuracy (the Testors version always seemed close enough) but I really like the very dark blue that the Flying Heritage Museum -5 is painted in. I have noticed that most the War Birds, i.e. Corsairs, Bearcats, Tigercats, Hellcats and some FAA are using a very dark glossy sea blue that is almost black, like English Racing Green which my Blackpuddlian dad assured me was almost a black green. Anyway, if I can get close to that I would be pretty happy, although the Tamiya color at first look seems just a little to light for 1945 schemes. Were night fighters painted a darker blue, or was it the same. Well thanks again guys, I am rambling on. I'm one of those guys that if you asked me for the time I would build you a watch!

cheers

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If you think it's too light - you could always use a black primer which would darken the overlying paint... I did that recently using Tamiya XF-17, and if I didn't know otherwise, I would have said it was almost black in colour, but it definitely blue, just a very, very dark glossy blue!

 

Cant post any pics as not at home at the moment.

 

regards

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Thanks for the input, that will be the best option for my first try at acrylics. I just checked out the White Ensign/colorcoat enamels and will be using them for my Japanese subjects, their colors are supposed to be very accurate, and I haven't yet seen acrylics with such a large variety of colors for such a complicated paint system. I don't know if the Japanese had the equivelent of an RLM or MAP to overlook and maintain some kind of color consistency. For now, it's time to build a nice glossy dark sea blue Hellcat, even I can't mess that up right?

Cheers

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There is a second seller of the Colorcoats line here in the USA; just click on the link for Sovereign Hobbies above that Troy posted above. You can then find them under the "Where to Buy" link. Jamie Duff of @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies is committed to producing a good quality paint that is accurate to the original standards. Nick Millman graciously sent me his notes on both the Colorcoats and AK Interactive lines of IJNAAF/IJAAF paints. Mr. Millman noted that most of the Colorcoats paints were good matches; a few were maybe a bit too this or too much that. Jamie had consulted with Nick about the line. After I received Nick's notes; Jamie had reformulated the IJNAAF/IJAAF paints to match Nick's recommendations. The AK Interactive line is acrylic; the IJNAAF set of paints is very accurate according to Nick's notes. Good luck on your builds!

HTH

Joe

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