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Humbrol enamel 53 & Humbrol enamel 53.Met - BOTH DIFFERENT


AdriaN (MLT)

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I always loved using 'Humbrol Super Enamel enamel - no 53 - Gun Metal'. It was always this dark metallic gray shade, always used inside jet pipes and jet engines.
When it was finishing.. i went out and bought another No 53. This time the tin said 'MET.' (metallic) and the Super was removed. (new branding?)
Open testing i was very surprised to see the paint was not that dark gunmetal i always knew. It is in fact now considerably much lighter!!

Any ideas as to why has Humbrol changed this paint colour? And why was super removed? did the super actually mean anything? Has anybody realized this change in paint?

 

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Edited by AdriaN (MLT)
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I bought some "new" Humbrol 53 and 56 earlier this year and have to say that I'm not impressed. I've used both in the past since getting back into the hobby in 2001 and loved them but this new stuff is sadly rubbish IMHO.

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It's a well known fact that the quality of Humbrol enamels has really suffered of late. Put simply, it's not the same formula it used to be. Many, many complaints about it on this very forum. But Humbrol seem to do nothing about it. I haven't used it for years and use alternative paint brands instead, that I can trust to be consistent and give a good finish. I even steered away from enamels and use lacquer paints instead and much prefer them..

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Just bought new tin of 53 last week (or thereabouts).  Perfectly good stuff.  It doesn't look like the tin you've got, having a wrap-round label (but same style) saying made in UK and a sticker saying Met 53 on a plain lid.

 

Which has been true of all the recent tins of Humbrol I've bought.  They did pass through a bad spell but I had enough stock to pass through it largely unscathed.  I see this as a benefit of having a large number of paint tins in the stash - bound to come in useful sometime!  This just-in-time approach to business may be all very well but it doesn't work in hobbies.

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Humbrol enamels got really bad. I just opened a tin the other day of 24 signal yellow, from just before they bought production back to the UK and it's closer to Zinc Chromate! At one point I opened five tins of 155 and got three very different colours from them. Also some colours seem very thick and some have a larger grain than other as some will not spray very well when doing fine detail while some of them will. I haven't tried the latest tins yet, so I don't know if there is any improvement but my go to enamel is Colour Coats now, though they are more expensive they seem consistent and spray great.

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12 hours ago, sapperastro said:

Revell enamel is pretty good too. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a gun metal, so mixing some steel or aluminium with black is necessary.

They SEEM to have Aqua Color 'dull gun metal'

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