Is there a Tamiya spray can, or Halfords rattle-can for this?

[bootneck]

I am trying to find a spray can that is a match for the blue-grey on these Whirlwinds.  Anyone advise of a suitable rattle-can product please?

 

 

cheers.

 

Mike

[Mick4350]

17 hours ago, bootneck said:

I am trying to find a spray can that is a match for the blue-grey on these Whirlwinds.  Anyone advise of a suitable rattle-can product please?

 

 

 

Mike

Great Photo..

[Giorgio N]

That should be RAF Blue Grey, 633 in the BS.381c standard. It's a hard to find colour as modelling paints go, with IIRC only Xtracolour, Colourcoats and Hataka doing a properly matched paint.

At the same time this is a colour that is available from even Amazon and similar outlets in spray cans for automotive applications. The problem is finding out if these paints work fine on plastic or not...

Googling I found several matches and a number of companies offering acrylic spraycans... now acrylic can mean anything so it would be better checking if it's an acrylic that can work on plastic. One example is this company:

 

https://www.proaerosols.com/paint-colours/british-standard-colour-aerosol-spray-paint/british-standard-381c

 

Alternatively Halfords offer a custom paint mixing service, guess they'd have no problem in matching what is a surprisingly common colour in the automotive world

[Giorgio N]

Forgot to add one point about these spray cans: generally soray cans for modelling purpose have quite fine nozzles, other cans depend. Better check that the nozzle gives a nice fine cover

[bootneck]

Thanks Giorgio, I'll have a look at those.

I'm going to throw a spanner in the works now, and ask about lightening for scale.    Does anyone know what factor of lightening I would need for 1:144 scale?  I had heard it could be as much as 25%.    It  might be worth me mixing one of those mentioned Xtracolor, Hataka or Colourcoats RAF Blue-greys with the lightening factor and taking the result to Halfords for a match.

 

cheers

 

Mike

[Giorgio N]

Scale effect is one of those things that depend a lot on modeller's taste. IMHO using the correct paint on a 1/144 model would make it look too dark especially with such a dark grey as this so I would definitely lighten the base colour. There's no fixed factor really, depends again on taste, but for 1/144 reaching 25% sounds reasonable. It makes sense to do a test first using standard modelling pain and then start from there. You may well find that the resulting colour is available in a certain paint range.Once scale effect is thrown in the mix, the right colour is less important. as long as the "character" of the original colour is kept in mind. This is a blue grey that is clearly grey when seen from close distance but looks more blue from farther away, meaning it's also a tricky colour to get right

[bootneck]

I agree and also found that the colour got even darker when I gave the models a coat of Klear.  At larger scales it probably isn't a concern; however, at 1:144 they do look too dark when using the 'recommended' colours.

 

Thanks again.

 

Mike