Good Cold War-era French paints?

[Procopius]

I have a few Mirages in my stash, and I realized I don't have any cold-war era paints to do them in their RAF-esque grey-and-green scheme that they wore through much of the later Cold War period. Can anyone advise me as to who makes paints for them, or even what those colours are called? I'd be most gratified.

[Hook]

Does this help?:

 

Cheers,

 

Andre

 

 

[Aardvark]

17 hours ago, Procopius said:

Can anyone advise me as to who makes paints for them, or even what those colours are called?

This paint called Celomer and how written 

@eclipse

"According to what people from Dassault told me, they don't use nor FS nor BS, actually not any foreign color charts but their own paints."

I think @eclipse many know about Celomer paint and his probably equivalent!

 

 For me, this theme is also interesting.

 

B.R.

Serge

 

[JPuente54]

Xtracolor offered a line of Cold War/Modern line of French Air Force colors about 5 or so years ago. There were about a dozen or so greys, blues, green(one I believe) listed. I bought a tin of each one from Roll Hobbies IIRC. They aren't being offered now; but, tins may still lurk about their(Kitlynx bought the Roll Hobbies line and products, Hannants might have a few still a back shelf) storerooms/ware house. Most likely you'll find them at an IPMS/USA(or local branch) vendor floor. Hannants may bring them back for sale; not likely, but who knows? I have have suggested to @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies that he start offering a line of Cold War/Modern French Air Force and French Army aircraft(helos) paints.

[Procopius]

1 hour ago, JPuente54 said:

Xtracolor offered a line of Cold War/Modern line of French Air Force colors about 5 or so years ago. There were about a dozen or so greys, blues, green(one I believe) listed. I bought a tin of each one from Roll Hobbies IIRC. They aren't being offered now; but, tins may still lurk about their(Kitlynx bought the Roll Hobbies line and products, Hannants might have a few still a back shelf) storerooms/ware house.

Good suggestion -- I checked at Kitlinx, but they only had the two Mirage 2000 greys. 

 

It's honestly surprising how little info there is on Armée de l'Air paints, or how few of the specialty paint manufacturers seem to offer their colours, given the size of the postwar French air force.

[Giorgio N]

7 hours ago, Procopius said:

Good suggestion -- I checked at Kitlinx, but they only had the two Mirage 2000 greys. 

 

It's honestly surprising how little info there is on Armée de l'Air paints, or how few of the specialty paint manufacturers seem to offer their colours, given the size of the postwar French air force.

 

I wouldn't say that there is little info, as not too long ago there was even a link posted here to NORMDEF-0001 an official French defence ministry document that listed all colours to be used on aircraft ond other military equipment. This document makes refefence to the AFNOR paint catalogue, that while little known outside France, is in that country commonly used in the industry.

The problem with French colours, as with the colours used by other countries, is that documentation is in the original language and as such is rarely used in the English speaking world. All we get is sometime a Celomer number. Now Celomer is not a standard, Celomer was a paint manufacturer, today owned under a different name by Akzo Nobel.

Celomer was established in 1963 as the result of the fusion of two companies, one of which was a name that sometime comes out when researching older aircraft colours, Cellolac.

 

The availability of good modelling paints reproducing these colours is a different story, and looks like not many manufacturers have ever ventured in making these.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

For my own part, I just (severely) doubt I'd be able to recover costs of making them. I did use that AFNOR catalogue which @Giorgio N mentioned above's CIELAB values to render the catalogue so I have the data. I am fairly certain it's incomplete as far as the historical French colour palette since WW2 goes though, as they're all fairly non-descript off-greys.

[Aardvark]

7 hours ago, Procopius said:

It's honestly surprising how little info there is on Armée de l'Air paints, or how few of the specialty paint manufacturers seem to offer their colours, given the size of the postwar French air force.

 

5 minutes ago, Giorgio N said:

The availability of good modelling paints reproducing these colours is a different story, and looks like not many manufacturers have ever ventured in making these.

Long time ago I talked about this with Alexander Akanikhin, the owner of AKAN, despite the fact that he has a catalog of original French colour, he did not want to do them then because he did not consider this theme  perspective.

 

B.R.

Serge

 

P.S.

11 minutes ago, Giorgio N said:

not too long ago there was even a link posted here to NORMDEF-0001 an official French defence ministry document that listed all colours to be used on aircraft ond other military equipment.

Do You remember what kind of topic it was?

[Giorgio N]

11 minutes ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

For my own part, I just (severely) doubt I'd be able to recover costs of making them. I did use that AFNOR catalogue which @Giorgio N mentioned above's CIELAB values to render the catalogue so I have the data. I am fairly certain it's incomplete as far as the historical French colour palette since WW2 goes though, as they're all fairly non-descript off-greys.

 

Very good point that makes perfect sense ! As modellers we are often too ready to complain that no manufacturer has made this or that while totally forgetting that in the end the manufacturer must make a profit on whatever product we'd love to see. Guess other manufactuters felt the same about such paints.

 

7 minutes ago, Aardvark said:

 

Long time ago I talked about this with Alexander Akanikhin, the owner of AKAN, despite the fact that he has a catalog of original French colour, he did not want to do them then because he did not consider this theme  perspective.

 

B.R.

Serge

 

P.S.

Do You remember what kind of topic it was?

 

Thread was here. The link I posted had been posted before in a different thread, so credit goes to a member whose name I unfortunately can't remember.

 

 

[Roy LeMont]

I think this one looks pretty good, and it was done using Gunze RLM colors.  LINK

 

Cheers,

Roy

[JPuente54]

I do understand and respect @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies to not make a line of these paints. They have to be good sellers to a lot of modellers; not just to a few enthusiasts such as myself. I'd still like it; but, I shall live with it. Hannants does have its "recipes" for modern French colors; greater sales of French Air Force(modern) could prod them to bring them back.

[JosephLalor]

It might be possible to cross-reference the NORMDEF 0001 to other standards using the CIELAB values mentioned by Jamie.  You can enter LAB values into the form at the top of https://www.e-paint.co.uk/Convert_lab.asp and get nearest equivalents in e.g. RAL, FS, BS, Pantone.  Of course you'd have to know what the colours you're after are called in the standard.  For example the green might be gris/vert-jaune foncé and the grey might be gris/bleu foncé or gris/bleu moyen foncé.   For the dark grey/green you get LAB values of 36.18, - 2.47, 4.77 and 36.07, - 1.78, 4.70.

 

The chips in the standard come with the disclaimer, 'Couleurs approximatives, ne pouvant servir de reference', so are indicative only.

Edited January 22, 2020 by JosephLalor