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Accurate chipping color for Soviet and American tanks


WelshZeCorgi

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What is the color that should be used to accurately represent scuffing of American and Soviet Armor?

 

Here is what I think I know so far. 

1. American tanks from different factories had different primer colors.

2. American tanks used some sort of hard enamel paint that was really difficult to scuff off.

3. Soviet tanks did not use primer in the earlier stages of the war, but did later on. 

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I believe that 1 is incorrect.  Red primer was pretty much universal, although the exact shade may have varied.

 

US primer and top coats bonded very well, using paint tech from the civilian automotive industry: nitrocellulose lacquers, followed by top-coat baking.  So It would be unusual to see paint on US vehicles worn through to primer as both top coat and primer tended to wear and chip off together.  It would more likely wear through to bare metal, but was indeed very durable compared to paint finishes of other nations.  Kurt Laughlin was very disparaging on Missing Lynx recently about "artistic but inaccurate" effects showing bare primer on US vehicles.

 

I don't believe the Russians primed any of their wartime tanks.  They would have seen that as an entirely unnecessary time and material-wasting step.  Tanks were built to be sacrificed: 50,000 of the 60,000 T-34/76s built were lost, some within a few days of being built.  You don't redesign a tank to simplify production by removing 5,000 component parts (model 1942) and then waste time with unnecessary double painting!  I'm uncertain whether Russian tanks were hand or spray painted.

 

Remember that armour plate is a dark metallic brown colour.  It doesn't wear or chip to silvery or graphite shades, and it takes a long time to rust in any appreciable way because of the various rust-inhibiting elements in the alloy.  Rolled Homogeneous will rust more quickly than face-hardened because of the lower surface carbon content, but still very slowly compared to mild steels.  Unarmoured mild steel parts will wear to a bright finish, and will rust readily if wear and damage is not painted-over.  Weld metal will always be bright metal and will never rust.

 

 

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On 10/10/2018 at 11:18 AM, Das Abteilung said:

I believe that 1 is incorrect.  Red primer was pretty much universal, although the exact shade may have varied.

 

US primer and top coats bonded very well, using paint tech from the civilian automotive industry: nitrocellulose lacquers, followed by top-coat baking.  So It would be unusual to see paint on US vehicles worn through to primer as both top coat and primer tended to wear and chip off together.  It would more likely wear through to bare metal, but was indeed very durable compared to paint finishes of other nations.  Kurt Laughlin was very disparaging on Missing Lynx recently about "artistic but inaccurate" effects showing bare primer on US vehicles.

So I'm wondering if chipping with a metallic brown color is accurate, but is it still true that it was hard to chip/scuff american tanks because the paint was more durable and better maintained?

On 10/10/2018 at 11:18 AM, Das Abteilung said:

 

 

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Yes and yes, I think. 

 

In scale, the metallic effect on small chips and scratches will be hard to see.  Proprietary chipping colours are essentially dark browns.  For larger wear areas you might try a Vandyke Brown metallic oil pastel.  This can be used in different ways for different effects: cotton buds and finger tips are effective tools.  There are shades of metallic brown pencils out there too.

 

Contrary to the popular artistic trend to black and white undercoating and pre-shading, I undercoat/prime my AFVs in dark brown and post-shade.  As I handle them for painting some of the top coat is inevitably worn off, which can give a pleasing worn effect.  If you use AK Interactive's Washable Agent in your top coat, or one of the proprietary chipping coatings or hair spray you can then deliberately work away at the top coat to reveal the brown primer.

 

We also need to think about which areas wear most, usually where the crew mount and dismount and where there is regular access for service and maintenance.  Chips and scratches from bumps and scrapes with scenery and static objects will be more random, but are too often over-done.

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  • 2 weeks later...

While posting in another thread on this site about UK and Canadian colours I looked up the specification for 4BO Protection Green to see if it contained the Chromate III Oxide pigment that most other countries couldn't get during WW2.  Russia had its own sources of the ore from which it could be processed.  Now I know why 4BO is called Protection Green: it contains 15-20% Zinc Chromate, which is in itself a primer widely if not universally used in the aviation industry at the time.  So I think that answers the question of Russian tank primers somewhat more emphatically.

 

With thanks to the 4BO Green website, this colour was composed of 15-20% of the highly toxic and carcinogenic Zinc Chromate, a yellow-green colour most commonly seen in its virgin colour as an aviation primer.  The main component of 4BO was 40-60% Yellow Ochre with 10-20% White and 10% Ultramarine.  So it's essentially a green made from yellow and blue.  But with such wide tolerances in the amount of each pigment there could clearly have been considerable shade variation between manufacturers and batches.

 

 

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I was looking at the M3 Grant at Bovington recently, actually looking to see if there was any indicator in hidden areas of the factory colour under the current scheme.  There were a couple of areas worn through the desert finish to a green layer then to bare metal.  There was no sign of any visible primer, supporting a post on another forum suggesting that the primer and top coat were bonded by the heating process and essentially wore and flaked as a single layer.

 

While their other US vehicles are generally in good condition - and of course we don't know what's been repainted - they do have a USMC M4E8(105) and an M74 ARV in particularly poor surface condition.  Neither of these show any evidence of visible red primer.

 

I suspect that the top coat was probably a fast-drying nitrocellulose lacquer as used almost universally in the US automotive industry of the time, although this can be described as an enamel.  There is in fact no generally accepted single definition of enamel paint.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 years later...
On 14/11/2018 at 21:57, Yorkshire man said:

Here's one they made earlier (for discussion purposes only):-

 

Took 4 mins to dry !

tc3qs2n52rf11.png

Yeah but left in 20 mins if you read the full article,  everything we see today nis the red of the treatment from strengthened armour plate I have seen in many books that this came from used a red oxide loads prove this but we just dont seem to believe it alot of modellers use black for chipping or German black brown! Actually British scc 1A brown from real colours give a perfect worn effect through to the armour plate you see when you colourize photo's you'll see there is always some red plate showing through somewhere 

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I have to disagree.  This post is about WW2 practise, not what we see today.  There is little colour photography in WW2, and no reliable colour photography because of colour shifts caused by the film stock of the day.  Green and blue shifts are most common.  So period photos are untrustworthy and colourised photos are completely untrustworthy.  Monochrome shows you only tone, not colour.  And preserved vehicles will always have been repainted.  Surviving untouched WW2 painted vehicles are extremely rare, WW1 even rarer (2 tanks).

 

There is no "loads of proof" because we do not have surviving untouched examples (which would in any case have endured another 80 years of paint weathering since WW2) and we do not have trustworthy imagery.  Instead we have supposition, speculation and assumption.  And there is no conspiracy of disbelief in the modelling community.  This argument is usually deployed by those with a fixed point of view that is wide of the mark and who think they know best regardless.  Modelling books - books about modelling I mean, especially those dedicated to artistic weathering published by paint companies with products to sell - are likewise not to be trusted because they fall into the same trap of supposition, speculation and assumption.  Not to mention artistic interpretation: 10 from Len..........

 

As for the colour of armour plate, whether Rolled Homogenous or Face Hardened (which includes castings) of any nation, I can assure you that it is - and has for at least 107 years been - a dark chocolate metallic brown with very slow corrosion and oxidation because of the effects of other metals contained in the alloy.  Unless in a corrosive atmosphere such as salt water or salt-laden air.

 

The very purpose of a non-etching primer like red oxide is to provide a keying surface for the top coat colour to bond to while it bonds to the metal surface.  Having the top coat chipping off is exactly the effect the primer is designed to prevent compared to painting onto bare metal.  An etching primer like the zinc chromate used in Russian 4BO Protection Green (note the name) will etch itself onto the metal surface to bond.  Which is how Russia gets away in WW2 without priming.

 

That being said, in areas of high boot traffic on AFVs you may see the top coat being worn through to primer by abrasion.  But wear-through to bare metal will happen fairly quickly after that because the primer has relatively poor abrasion resistance.  That's why you top-coat it with durable paint layer or two.........  Otherwise we'd all be using 4BO.

 

Something else to ask yourself about chips and scrapes is where and how.  Too many models are polka-dotted with chips in all sorts of strange places.  Boots, hands and uniforms will cause wear-through, not chips.  The same with areas where tow cables are stowed.  These often vibrate and move about, wearing away paint where they touch.  Chips and scratches come from contact with objects, vegetation, buildings and structures, other vehicles - things hard enough to take the paint off: not the mayor's prize Begonias.  So think how and where - and why - the vehicle will have contacted them.  Will the glacis, upper hull sides and the dished roadwheels on a Jagdpanther have a chickenpox of chips as I saw recently on a model?  Unlikely.  Small arms projectile and shell fragment impacts will be different.  These will be directional and will most likely have dinked the metal surface.  Even a 7 - 8mm ball round will leave a small dink.  You may well get chips around the edges of heavy engine access hatches where these have been manhandled none too carefully.  But around the openings of crew hatches smooth wear-through is much more likely than chips.

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