Re: [MV] M151A1 paint color samples

Douglas Greville (dgrev@apollo.ruralnet.net.au)
Tue, 13 Apr 1999 12:29:48 +0930

Jim

> What I did was go to a hobby shop that had Testors brand model paints.
-snip-
> For what it's worth, the AERVOE flat Olive Drab 34087 matched exactly
> with the Testors 34087.

What you did was very methodical and logical. What does surprise me is that
it worked.

Two reasons for this.

1) Model paint manufacturers are supposed to "scale down" their paint so
that if you have made, say, a 1/35 model of your CMP and hold it up at
arms length then back off so that the model and your real vehicle are
"apparently" the same size (in full sunlight), then the colour should
be the same (we are
assuming that both are newly painted and that you did source accurately
spec'd or original paint for your vehicle).

Somewhere at sometime I have seen an explanation of this, (I think it was
Humbrol pamphlet about 20 years ago) it was involved
and has something to do with the amount of light reflected back from
so many square metres of vehicle in comparison to that from so many
square millimetres of model. The end result is that the model paint
should be significantly different in colour, if held against the full
size vehicle. In the case of military greens, lighter.

2) I tried this in reverse, I painted a model of one of my vehicles using
some of the actual paint from the vehicle, it is the appropriate colour
but in no way a match.

You will also be surprised at the difference in apparent colour and gloss
level that can be achieved with any paint between brushing and spraying
due to the effects of the thinner that you need to added to obtain a spray
consistency.

Model paints also use much more finely ground pigments and should be
formulated differently so that they do not attack plastic.

Having tried to get paint matched to sample in Australia, I can tell
you that it is an up hill battle. Our system bears no relation to the
one used in either America or England. The computerised paint colour
analysers do not want to interpret military green paint and just
return an "outside sampling parrameters" result. Matching has to be
done by eye and by using tinter bases that quite often are missing
one of the essential components needed to produce military green.
Consider yourselves lucky to have the likes of Aervoe and Gillespie
and to be able to mail order paint. At present, I think we are down
to one manufacturer that is producing "spraying enamel" tinters. All
the others have been bought out by the big companies and no longer
exist.

Back to Testors; your test excercise suggests to me that their paints
are actual matches rather than "scaled, model paints", handy to know and
if this is the case, they provide a very useful reference, especially
at $2.50 (in Australia) a bottle.

Regards
Doug

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Armoured Vehicles Collector
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M8 Ferret

dgrev@ruralnet.net.au

Web Armour site at: http://Fast.to/DG

(http://members.xoom.com/dgrev/index.html)

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