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Accuracy of AMMO by Mig Jiménez RAF WWII Colours


Nobby Clarke

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I have been doing a great deal of DIY of late and two tins of the same mass produced Dulux paint had a very noticeable difference in tone so let’s not think that every tin of a specific colour through the ages has had identical contents.

 

Mike

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My view on things is that one can make things extremely complicated to achieve nothing or one can choose to make things clear and simple while addressing all.
We know there are standard swatches and definitions around for many many colours. We know there is and was wear and application.

We can choose to simply establish the standard colour and let the modeller do his or her thing to make for the variation. This is clear and gives at the same time freedom.
Colour enthusiasts are always put in a corner of nitpicking rivet counters but that is far from the truth.
The modeller models with the knowledge of standards, the colour research establishes colour standards.
I've never ever seen a colour man telling modellers to use a certain pigment or oil stain shade. I've seen many many many modellers acting as colour researchers without a single paper, colour card or book on colour...
Now keep calm and model on. :D

Edited by Steben
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12 hours ago, Merlin said:

Keefr, speak to the Medway Aircraft Preservation Society or RAF Museum archives, they will tell you they spent time with Hendon getting the colours correct , not sure why you say they may be incorrect. unless you are an AMMO MIG fan.

 

Nope, never used them, never will, I don't like their colours!

 

My point is, you cannot just state the colours on the picture of the Spitfire are 'correct'. I accept the restorers went to great efforts to ensure they might be, but how do they, or anyone else know, that archival artifacts some 80 or so years old haven't changed in that time? Might they have faded by 5% - if not during the time they have been preserved 'correctly' then before they entered the archives. Even a very minor colour shift will mean they are not 'correct' - they may be very, very close to being the same as when the Spitfire was first painted but that isn't guaranteed. And it would be interesting, if impossible, to check every colour chip in every copy of the R.A.F. museum book against every other copy of said book to see if they are all identical.....! 

 

And you apparently posted that picture to show how close it was to the colour 'chips' posted under it - the green in those looks rather different to me, viewed on my uncalibrated, out of the box, chromebook screen. I bet if I looked at them on either of my old laptops, or either of my tablets, or my phone the colours would look slightly different again. So I don't think you can simply caption a picture in a thread on colours as 'correct'.

 

Then, in regard to those WW2 'colour' pictures. How do we know they are actual colour pictures or have been colourised after the event. Look at how washed out the grass and sky looks in many of them - or the desert floor under AN-V. And if they are actual colour pictures, what film stock was used? Did the photographer or lab tech who processed them get the exposure, development time, chemical mixes etc etc all correct - even top of the range current digital cameras have trouble getting certain colours 'correct' and prints taken off them still fade - how faded are 75 -80 year old prints? And to me, the first and second pictures Troy posted look to show different dark greens and dark earth - with the colours in the second one looking more like the light green and light earth chips in the pic you posted of the colour chips in the 'bible'....

 

I accept this thread was started to question the accuracy, or not, of Mig AMMO colours. I also accept it's been shown they aren't particularly accurate. But then so are many other manufacturers paints not 'accurate'. I tend to agree with the opinion that Jamie at Sovereign is probably the person who puts most effort into getting as close to 'correct' as is possible. Unfortunately however I've long given up using enamels. That leads on to another bug bear of mine, the differences in the same manufacturers ranges of acrylic and enamel paint ranges - although I no longer use them I still have a fair few xtracolor (sic) enamels and xtracrylic acrylics. I don't think I've yet found a match between the same colour in either range when applied to models I've built. And similar to mick b's recent experience with Dulux, for some reason I have three pots of xtracrylic PRU Blue - brushed out onto the same piece of card they are all different! 

 

Keith

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I'm not someone who believes every batch of paint was identical. The computer controlled machine we use can't do that...

 

I do however believe that in 99.9% of cases, the saturation and tone of a manufactured paint will be inextricably linked.

 

Lighter than intended but more saturated in hue fails the Laugh Test (TM) for me when it comes to camouflage colours since, as per my video on the last Ammo thread, one needs to use obscene quantities of expensive (and during wartime very restricted) pigments to achieve such a mistake. As such, using the pigments intended, if it's lighter than intended it will be less saturated also.

 

Different paints and different pigments behave differently under weathering. The wartime RAF Dark Green and Dark Earth displayed fairly consistent weathering, and it's invariably the Dark Earth which appears to wash out before the Dark Green does. Hence a model with overly light and bright Dark Green with a dark Dark Earth always looks wrong to anyone vaguely familiar with the subject although perhaps they can't always put their finger on why it looks wrong.

 

My conclusion? Modellers have latitude. The model paints don't need to exactly match the MAP chips to look really good. However, not anything goes and "Hur, dur, variations and, umm, something about a war on" is not a valid justification for explaining away anomalies. There certainly would have been variation in the appearance of manufactured paints, but they will invariably land within a certain envelope - much like how scientists can predict a window and a course within which a space object will enter the atmosphere and an eliptical shape patch of Earth's surface where it will land. Anything can't happen - the influences required to make that happen are not there.

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2 hours ago, mick b said:

I have been doing a great deal of DIY of late and two tins of the same mass produced Dulux paint had a very noticeable difference in tone so let’s not think that every tin of a specific colour through the ages has had identical contents.

no, but they are the same colour.   Applied to two separate cards, and viewed apart, I suspect they would look basically the same.

(DIY tip, get enough paint, and then mix the cans to get an even shade.)

But as the post made by Jamie about wartime paint, they are made,  they are made they will end up with a ceratin 'envelope'  of colour.

53 minutes ago, keefr22 said:

but how do they, or anyone else know, that archival artifacts some 80 or so years old haven't changed in that time? Might they have faded by 5% - if not during the time they have been preserved 'correctly' then before they entered the archives. Even a very minor colour shift will mean they are not 'correct' - they may be very, very close to being the same as when the Spitfire was first painted but that isn't guaranteed. And it would be interesting, if impossible, to check every colour chip in every copy of the R.A.F. museum book against every other copy of said book to see if they are all identical.....! 

the RAF Musuem book was done in the 70's.   Paint formulas exist,  @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies has made up Royal Navy paint to these formulas to check.

What is more imporant from these, as Jamies has so well pointed out,  given the sheer volume of paint needed, and the pigments used, and the varing costs,  that paint was within a close range.   And it is very easy for model paint not to be, as in they are making very small amounts in comparison, and so the using far too much of the wrong pigments is a lot easier...

58 minutes ago, keefr22 said:

Then, in regard to those WW2 'colour' pictures. How do we know they are actual colour pictures or have been colourised after the event.

Most, if not all, they are quoted are from the Flickr of @Etiennedup, who is careful to use genuine wartime colour.  In the case of the RAF images, most are well known or have a known provanace. 

 

1 hour ago, keefr22 said:

That leads on to another bug bear of mine, the differences in the same manufacturers ranges of acrylic and enamel paint ranges - although I no longer use them I still have a fair few xtracolor (sic) enamels and xtracrylic acrylics. I don't think I've yet found a match between the same colour in either range when applied to models I've built. And similar to mick b's recent experience with Dulux, for some reason I have three pots of xtracrylic PRU Blue - brushed out onto the same piece of card they are all different! 

I spent some time yesterday playing around with paints, and chip chart.

One thing I found with the Vallejo, a neat brush out on plastic card, and a thinned with water brush out on a model give different results,  the model parts are significantly lighter.   

 

I'll do some photos later on.   

 

@Merlin,  when brushed out, Vallejo 70.894 Olive Green  look good against the RAF chip, when applied to the model, it goes on lighter and greener. 

  

The orange hues of Vallejo English Uniform can be removed by adding a very small amount of blue (I'll add in the details) , I used 5% (2 ml of English Uniform with 0.1 ml of blue) this shifts to a subtle green, but when brushed out, again, this lightens up.  This may not be a factor if sprayed, but then you run into problems with minor touch ups.

 

I have also been testing what Tamiya I have. It has been a very informative exercise, but certainly a work in progress, but for me, a useful one, as it, well, it would be great to just be able to take a pot of X paint and use it with confidence it not then going to look awful when applied...   much of this has come about as the Hurricane that got redone in Xtracrylix looks pretty yuk to me....  after finding that the Vallejo lightened up when applied. 

 

  

 

 

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1 minute ago, Troy Smith said:

no, but they are the same colour.   Applied to two separate cards, and viewed apart, I suspect they would look basically the same.

(DIY tip, get enough paint, and then mix the cans to get an even shade.)

 

  

 

 

 

As I didn’t possess a clean empty 5 litre can that wasn’t  a practical option but thanks anyway., I’m off to finish sucking that egg. 😂

 

Mike

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4 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

I'm not someone who believes every batch of paint was identical. The computer controlled machine we use can't do that...

 

I do however believe that in 99.9% of cases, the saturation and tone of a manufactured paint will be inextricably linked.

 

Lighter than intended but more saturated in hue fails the Laugh Test (TM) for me when it comes to camouflage colours since, as per my video on the last Ammo thread, one needs to use obscene quantities of expensive (and during wartime very restricted) pigments to achieve such a mistake. As such, using the pigments intended, if it's lighter than intended it will be less saturated also.

 

Different paints and different pigments behave differently under weathering. The wartime RAF Dark Green and Dark Earth displayed fairly consistent weathering, and it's invariably the Dark Earth which appears to wash out before the Dark Green does. Hence a model with overly light and bright Dark Green with a dark Dark Earth always looks wrong to anyone vaguely familiar with the subject although perhaps they can't always put their finger on why it looks wrong.

 

My conclusion? Modellers have latitude. The model paints don't need to exactly match the MAP chips to look really good. However, not anything goes and "Hur, dur, variations and, umm, something about a war on" is not a valid justification for explaining away anomalies. There certainly would have been variation in the appearance of manufactured paints, but they will invariably land within a certain envelope - much like how scientists can predict a window and a course within which a space object will enter the atmosphere and an eliptical shape patch of Earth's surface where it will land. Anything can't happen - the influences required to make that happen are not there.

Amen.
Some subjects even have more latitude than others. Think dunkelgelb which had at least 3 official standard switches.

Edited by Steben
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4 hours ago, Steben said:

Amen.
Some subjects even have more latitude than others. Think dunkelgelb which had at least 3 official standard switches.

 

"Dunkelgelb nach Muster" endangers this in the direction of derailing. I have a thing called Quellenamnesie (amnesia of source, i.e. you know Paris is the capitol of France and Brutus murdered Cesar, but you don't remember who told you or where you read it) and at some point I came across a statement that Ocker (ochre) was used in Dunkelgelb and that it is generally speaking of mineral origin and specifically was of Italian origin (Sienna) (despite other sources amphasizing ALL German paints of that time had to be produceable using locally available raw materials (and all had to be at the lowest oxidation level and thus a stable as possible). So, who knows, how much trueth is in it, but I consider it "possible" there were more or less "unintended" or maybe even "forced" variations in the master color chips - and maybe the original color ships had the character of giving a target for "an envelope".

 

So, who knows with what degree of perfection the Ocker was extracted from the dirt and what degree of variation in the raw material could be equalized (or was more added?) in the process - or ignored in the interest of producing a paint matching the prescribed sample "fairly well"?

 

(still, the AMMO RAF paints are way off! Humrol 29&30 are better matches :-)

Edited by Jochen Barett
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I have just been looking at some builds of the Beaufort 1/72 Airfix and saw one that hit me as wrong green, text said enamel Green 30, I google that and find Humbrol RAF Dk Green, a malachite green splat on an advert page,

AA0326_31516_Qty1_1.jpgand it matches the green on the model.

Be wary guys, and gals, 30 is not suitable. So Humbrol havent tried either. Compare this to the RAF chart and my posted pics, be they WW2 or accurate restorations.  brown is a bit pink as well.

There are going to be a lot of wrong green Beauforts, GS is wrong, Humbrol wrong. Local model shops though have Valejo, 873 my vote for Dk Earth as a good start point, and Valejo 893 or Humbrol Acrylic 116 for Dk Green.

Enamels Colourcoats or Phoenix Precision Paint.

Modellers must use colour references, DO NOT ASSUME THE PAINT MANUFACTURER HAVE DONE A GOO JOB.

They are definitely not choosing AMMO or GS or H because they are best match.

( I also never knew the Beaufort fuselage was all removable panels in real life, or is this a diecast metal kit ? )

Merlin

IMG_4164_mw.jpg?itok=aHBfO8TF

Edited by Merlin
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H30 existed long before anyone produced an authentic RAF Dark Green, and Airfix have called for H30 ever since when.  Humbrol do a better RAF Dark Green - as you say, 116; but Airfix don't call for it.  You're complaining at the wrong door.  OK, they're the same company now, but Airfix can call for 116 if they wanted to.

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Hi,

Just shouting into the wind though, not complaining to Airfix, they dont pull the strings of GS or AMMO etc.

Ah wait a mo, I think I see what you might have interpreted, you think I say H30 wrong and Airfix told kit makers to use it. I never knew that as I totally distrust the suggested colouirs, always do my own research.  So did Airfix say in the instructions H30 ? I have yet to get the kit, if so whatever is in instructions is no different to what tins say on them, if they say Bing Bong paint X45 Dark Green on the label, only a sheep will follow that, as I said,

Modellers must use colour references, DO NOT ASSUME THE PAINT MANUFACTURER HAVE DONE A GOOD JOB.

Its not correct if Airfix or TamiGawa refer to a colour, I am on about paint brands, not shouting at a kit diagram.

MODELLERS BEWARE, NEVER EVER GO BY WHAT IS ON AN INSTRUCTION DRAWING AS WHAT IS THERE IS CERTAINLY NOT THERE BECAUSE THE COLOUR IS ACCURATE ! Unless it says sop, that'll be the day !)

 

Merlin

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That's up to the modeller. 

They MUST do nothing.  You can suggest better means, or ask them to please beware, but semi-ordering people doesn't quite come across as nice. 

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2 hours ago, Merlin said:

Modellers must use colour references, DO NOT ASSUME THE PAINT MANUFACTURER HAVE DONE A GOO JOB.

I don't know if it was intended, but this really comes across as lecturing. No modeller must do anything except enjoying the hobby as he/she pleases. Many modellers, casual or not, will not assume that a colour defined may not be the best representation on the market (why should they?), nor do they necessarily care or be aware about modelling forums and such discussions. Because of that, they are for sure no 'sheep' as you called them :fraidnot:

Others which are interested in colour accuracy discussions and paint schemes most likely have their favourite paints anyway and research which part of an aircraft was painted which colour instead of going by the kit makers instruction.

If colours are an important topic for you, fine. But don't assume it has to be for others too in order to be accepted as 'serious' modellers.

 

Cheers

Markus

 

 

 

Edited by Shorty84
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Let's have a few less capitals and bold text from here on in please, folks.  If someone wants to paint their Mustang pink & gold, they are entitled to do just that.  Remember, it's their hobby as much as yours. :)

 

...and before you start, I'm only typing in red because no-one listens otherwise.  They're too busy getting their two penn'th in.  :dull:

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27 minutes ago, Mike said:

Let's have a few less capitals and bold text from here on in please, folks.  If someone wants to paint their Mustang pink & gold, they are entitled to do just that.  Remember, it's their hobby as much as yours. :)

 

...and before you start, I'm only typing in red because no-one listens otherwise.  They're too busy getting their two penn'th in.  :dull:

Hi Mike, would you happen to have the correct paint codes for the pink and gold please....or i could just use Mig Ammo i suppose 🤔 

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10 minutes ago, Andy J said:

Hi Mike, would you happen to have the correct paint codes for the pink and gold please....or i could just use Mig Ammo i suppose 🤔 

 

That's a tricky one.  I would suggest Mig 0198 for the gold.  As far as I can tell, the only 'pink' they do is a flesh tone, so it would have to be F548.  Let us know how you get on - looking forward to seeing the RFI.. ;) 

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4 minutes ago, Werdna said:

 

That's a tricky one.  I would suggest Mig 0198 for the gold.  As far as I can tell, the only 'pink' they do is a flesh tone, so it would have to be F548.  Let us know how you get on - looking forward to seeing the RFI.. ;) 

Is this a challenge I see before me 🙂

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3 hours ago, Graham Boak said:

and Airfix have called for H30 ever since when. 

Since when Airfix stopped doing their own paint!

By this,  Airfix Dark Green M3 was a decent stab at a scale RAF Dark Green BTW, it's a not too saturated olive green.  I have plenty of relics from the 70's still painted in this, and even then I knew that Humbrol 30 was not a good match to the Airfix colour as it was too blue....  Now, it's quite possible Airfix based ther paint colours on 60's Humbrol, and then Humbrol changed and Airfix didn't,  but Airfix paint was consistent in the mid/late 70's.

The point that Humbrol 30 was originally matched to the RAF Standard, but then changed it seems in the late 60's has been discussed and documented here on several occasions, @John who is a paint collector, 

"I've posted this before but it illustrates that, until mid-1960s or thereabouts, Humbrol 30 was a distinctively olive green:"

Hum301_zpsbhsyy7qu.jpg

 

There is a particularly useful post here, from the thread I took the above photo from.  https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/31838-raf-dark-green-paint/page/2/#elControls_2712815_menu

by @Nick Millman

"

In describing the development of the RAF camouflage colours the RAE reported that "the Dark Green finally chosen to represent the various greens of nature was a dull "bronze" green, containing a proportion of red, with a diffuse reflectivity of 10%". Notwithstanding that statement that red was included in devising the colour, the 1940 formula for Dark Green paint made by Goodlass, Wall & Co. Ltd., for example, consisted of three pigment "bases" incorporating chromium oxide (green), vegetable black and brown precipitated iron oxide. Those pigments do not result in a cold, blueish green or even a straight green. That company's catalogue reference for Dark Green paint was 83914 but it was made from a combination of 83905, 83910 and 83907, each of which was a paint colour with its own constituent binder and solvents.

 

That's the applied paint. The MAP colour standard for Dark Green as measured is a Munsell Yellow (like Olive Drab) approaching Green Yellow, quite dark at 2.9 and of low saturation at 1.5. Geoff Thomas' Munsell equivalent as published in ‘Eyes for the Phoenix’ (Hikoki, 1999) & ‘True Colours’ (Airfix Magazine, Feb 1983) is similar to mine - 10 Y 3/1.5 vs 10 Y 2.9/1.5 - just being a tiny tad lighter. 

 

The current BS 381C gives 241 Dark Green as a Munsell Green Yellow, approximately 2.3 GY 3.3/1.2. Taking the BS 381c L*a*b* measurements the difference from the wartime colour is at 5.54 where < 2.0 = a close match. The modern colour is slightly less saturated and lighter. However the BS 381c L*a*b* measurements equate to Munsell 9.8 Y 3.5/0.9 so the issue is around the fine - and close - transition from a Y to GY. Either way that is on the "dark yellow"/olive drab side of green whilst a colder, less olive, viridian-type green would measure as a Munsell Green or Blue Green.

 

Where chrome green (a mixture of chrome yellow and Prussian blue) was used instead of chromium oxide (which was in short supply) the paint surface would shift towards more olive or brownish as the yellow gradually decomposes the blue pigment. Chromium oxide greens are quite stable but as other pigments in the mix degraded a stronger, brighter green appearance might be expected. That is counter intuitive where it is more common to expect all paints to "fade". Wartime documents show that even in official circles the difference between chromium oxide and chrome green pigments was not appreciated and the term "chrome green" was used to describe both. The use of both pigments by different paint companies would have resulted in paints that matched the standard to begin with but which weathered very differently. The significance of that is where extant paint samples are used to determine the original appearance of the Dark Green colour standard.

 

There is always a tendency to conflate paint colour standards with applied paints so that people talk about aircraft painted with MAP Dark Green, or ANA this or FS that. But those are colour standards and the applied paints were manufactured to match them against a colour card, with each manufacturers own designation and formula for each paint colour, not always recorded (and with so far unknown criteria for tolerance and acceptance of variance in most cases). There is and was inevitable variance, by manufacturer formula, batch, application and weathering. One evidenced example of this is a RAE August 1941 analysis of Night and Special Night paints as applied in 11 different aircraft factories using paints supplied by five different paint manufacturers. The paints differed in reflectivity, the application methods differed in effectiveness and the appearance and resilience of the painted surfaces varied and that was before the aircraft entered service and were subjected to exposure, weathering and wear or tear. 

 

To cut a long story short, whilst extremes of variance in colour should probably be avoided I think modellers can relax about minor variance and just go with their preferred paint brand. The models are replicating applied paint and all the other factors affecting its appearance and not the colour standard per se. 

 

Nick  "

 

I know this was posted in this thread on page 3 here - https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235078859-accuracy-of-ammo-by-mig-jiménez-raf-wwii-colours/page/3/#elControls_4045174_menu

 

 

"by @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies, but it's worth putting next to Nick Millman's post above.

I'm going to point out some facts about real-life paint manufacture and either the reader will understand and "get it" or will not understand and are in no position to contradict me.

 

1) Usually camouflage colours are fairly low saturation colours because these blend in better with nature. They're seldom bright and bold. Low saturation colours are normally manufactured by adding coloured pigments to a base made from inexpensive white or white and black pigments.

 

2) Colour pigments are expensive. The expense varies depending on the specific pigment, but they're expensive.

 

3) The only way to over-saturate a colour so much is to substantially over-dose your base with the expensive colour pigments. I'm not talking about a few percent more or less - that causes minor differences which you only confirm the presence of with one swatch adjacent to another - I'm talking more in the order of a double dose to get something you obviously look at and think "woah".

 

4) In the case of colours like dark olive, these are mostly white, black and ochre (which is relatively inexpensive for a colour pigment) sometimes further tinted with a bit of red or green (which are often very expensive).

 

5) There can certainly be variances in a manufactured paint, but these tend to be greatly overstated, i.e. used as a ready made excuse for all sorts of mistakes. Ultimately, the only way a manufactured paint can end up so oversaturated is to have dumped in a vast amount of the expensive pigments, if not adding in new additional pigments in large quantities not expected in the recipe. Frankly, it's difficult to see how any manufactured paint could end up so drastically off target, particularly in the over-saturated sense, by any business that wasn't actively trying to bankrupt itself by roasting through obscene quantities of pigments like chrome green which were already expensive at the start of the war and in particularly short supply during.

 

6) I'd venture that most of the "there was a war on, you know" type apologists for such spectacular errors probably don't have any actual experience of what is and isn't possible when mixing different proportions of 2,3 or 4 pigments when 2 of those are usually black and white just to make your base to tint. You simply cannot end up with a Humbrol 30-esque bluish green using only the ingredients to make olive - i.e. you'd actually have to sabotage it by introducing if not blue then an obviously bluish green. Same goes for that bright green Spitfire above - you can't achieve that with black, white, ochre and a touch of red - you'd need to fire in a lot of bright green pigment in to get that saturated on an overly-light base. It would be more tan-like just using the basic olive green ingredients which only turns obviously olive when tinted enough with black. Put another way, with a fixed number of pigments in various ratios you WILL end up somewhere within a certain envelope, and usually when colours like this bright green are discussed it's because it's well outside that envelope.

 

The point of all the above? In essence it's harder to make a credible explanation for how such a colour might have been arrived at in a real-life paint manufacturing environment than it is to demonstrate that someone would have had to go to a lot of trouble to get it so far wrong. That is harder to rationalise than just getting it closer to correct."

 

Personally, this thread has meant  I have spent quite some recently trying to match the RAF Museum chips in acrylic  It has been a very enlightening exercise, by this, one you start playing with different paints you start to see how they need to be moved in a certain direction to match the chip, and 'seeing' the colour you need in other paints.  A lot easier with simple pigments, as opposed to the mixes in most model paints.

  in that some of the various tries at these can be made a lot closer with some little tweaks.    

I have mainly been trying to match with what Tamiya paints I have, but have played with some of the others.  It's a work in progress, partly as I'd rather tweak paint I have l already bought, than buy some new and find I'm not happy with that either....  (though there seems to be a shortage of various Tamiya and Gunze colours to buy at the moment as well. )

if I'm happy with consistent mixes, I'll post up some suggestions. 

 

One point for @Merlin,  you don't seem to reply to comments that have you tagged, like my observation that a very small amount (I think 5% is too much now) of Vallejo Blue added to English Uniform kills the orange, and adds the subtle greenness of the RAF Museum chip.   Also  Vallejo brushed out on plastic card can look quite different to the same Vallejo brushed onto a model.    I mentioned this further up the page.  Neither Vallejo 70.873 US Flat Drab or 70.893 Green are particularly close to the RAF chips once applied.

 

I think  they contain a high proportion of pigments that in full scale WW2 paint would be prohibitively expensive, (as described above)  and are a bit too 'bright' as a result.   

 

HTH 

 

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Hi,

Quote

you don't seem to reply to comments that have you tagged, like my observation that a very small amount (I think 5% is too much now) of Vallejo Blue added to English Uniform kills the orange, and adds the subtle greenness of the RAF Museum chip.   Also  Vallejo brushed out on plastic card can look quite different to the same Vallejo brushed onto a model.    I mentioned this further up the page.  Neither Vallejo 70.873 US Flat Drab or 70.893 Green are particularly close to the RAF chips once applied.

Sorry, not understanding 'that I have tagged'.

I have sprayed out the valejos ( I didnt brush it out as its impossible to get a perfect paint job brushing valejo, horrible stuff compared to Humbrol authentic,) as I was after a smooth paint job on an aircraft at competition standard level) , I used neat 70.873 and 70.893 and it, in the now hurried last few days before the event, matched the chart and wow it looked okay on a model, but I will do so again (spraying again) on a square of plastic card and also try your tweaks. I have a load of brands of paint here for doing a massive Luft and RAF analysis on (spraying onto white plastic card enough coats that become opaque) ,  I have been trying to find time for 2 yrs.

 

I paste thread addresses into a word doc, it can get tricky at times keeping on top of all forum posts, as they are not just BM, ends up like too many plates spinning on sticks !

Colours in WW2 might as is said vary, but I am sure GS didnt carefully make their distinctly yellow orange brown and grassy green having established that that is how it weathered in a month or so. They got it wrong and the 'well they varied and weathered' is simply an excuse for grabbing a pot and not bothering, trusting in , or not caring about, the colour used. That hardly anyones models looks like the MAP colours in the chart is saying most aircraft were not painted in the intended colours in WW2. Grab and Go on paint pots and aircraft models that dont look like MAP intended is going to continue but it would be nice to establish what paints actually give us the MAP intended colours, for those of us that do wish to make the model as it was intended to look in WW2. I am sure if flying restored aircraft had been painted in GS or AMMO Dk Green and Dk Earth the warbird loving fraternity would soon have something to say, though those out on a jolly wouldnt notice.

 

Merlin.

Edited by Merlin
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I'll use whatever paint I have available to me. When you're 450 km. from the closest hobby store and on a fixed retirement income, there are not a lot of options. Locally, I have access to a small nerd/gamer shop that does keep a small rack of Tamiya paint. Another shop has a rack of Citadel paint. That's it! I used up my little bit of G-S Dark Earth & Dark Green last year. I did order some Mr. Hobby paint but it doesn't match the G-S very well.

I have ordered and recently received some AK paints so I'll see how well these work when I start my next build.

 

 

 

Chris

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Hi Chris,

If my planned spray out here includes AK, and I have some somewhere, certainly Luft, I'll post images of what they look like.

I am puzzled is AK now AMMO MIG or are they totally independent, I see a forum post where the paint supplier of AK exits stage left on AK products, .

What an absolutely gorgeous woofer you have there by the way.

 

If we can in time come up with various mixes of common model paints, to suit what paints modellers have access to,  making RAF Dark Green and Dark Earth AND SKY to match the colours in the RAF Museum chart that would be good.

 

Merlin

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4 minutes ago, Merlin said:

What an absolutely gorgeous woofer you have there by the way.

 

My late woofer. We had to put him down on Boxing Day 2016.

 

As long as I can find a colour that fairly close to what I want, then I'll pass on mixing. 

 

 

 

Chris

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