Info needed: correct colours for WWII Aust vehicles

[Mrs Vampire]

Jaques my source is an original copy of the Australian standard

More on Munsel

It is a system used "back in the day" according to my paint technologist.

It works on the idea of a sphere containing all the coloure . Imagine holding a circle in fromt of you blue on one side red on the other greenat the botom and orange at the top . coming out of the page is lighter and going into the page is darker.
Munsdel takes slices of the sphere and produces a sample of each colour on the slice.
Clearly there is an infinity of colours so Munsel goes in incremental steps. To have a realy fine series of colours to compare with they produced an incredibly thick book which was likewise incredibly expensive.
There was a kind of cheap way of using it . That was to purchase a very broad set of basic colours and work out which "page" your colour was on and purchase that page.

This was pre spectro technology.

I think the AWM have put those colours up because they spent a swag on the Munsel system and want to keep using it. The Spectro gives the colour to an accuracy of several decimal places. Muncel is kind of whole intergers.

Munsel.jpg AS (E) 2K.509.jpg

[Mrs Vampire]

from the Australian Standard. The paint Chips I produce will be compared to the Canbera standard set.

The book is far to fragile to scan beyond this...

[Jacques Reed]

Hi Gina,

Will look forward to your reproduction of the colour chips. Will be glad to help with any costs involved.

Yes, from my reading Munsell is a bit archaic system but theoretically can cover an infinite range of colours by using decimal places in the description.

I just stumbled on this American website with the AWM color KG -J color chip as its Munsell equivalent.

As it is far from a standard colour somebody must have wanted it!


http://www.myperfectcolor.com/en/col...unsell-7.5y-42

Cheers,

[Mike Cecil]

The Munsell values were assigned by a Senior Curator only recently. As a consequence of this discussion, the record is to be amended to make that fact more obvious. The amended record should be 'live' in a few days.

The Munsell system is a handy, easily portable and quick system that can be used in the office and throughout the storage areas, whereas it's possibly a bit difficult to get a tank or other large piece of equipment under a spectrograph, and chipping a piece of paint off an object doesn't go over well with conservators! I'm told that thus far, they (and the feedback from the public, mostly modelers) have found the results immensely useful.

Also, for potentially thousands of objects, you pay only once for the Munsell book, not for each and every analysis as you would using a 'spectro'.

I suppose its a case of 'horses for courses'.

Mike

[Mike K]

I have mentioned this before, a good prospect for finding matt paint is modern external house paint , it is usually water based and it's freely available in hardware stores .

Haymes make a matt external house paint that may be of use for that authentic patina look on a military vehicle . It's called solarshield or similar and they guarantee it for 20 years on a house . It can be applied directly onto galvanized iron , it' s self priming . They have it available in four grades of sheen from dead flat to shiny . Mike

[Tony Wheeler]

Nowadays Mike the professionals use portable handheld spectrometers. As Gina mentioned a while back: "Florite paints have provided all the spectrographic analysis and colour matching , even visiting the Tank with their electronic equipment to ensure we had it right."

The advantage of spectrometry, obviously enough, is that it doesn't rely on human eyesight and lighting conditions. As opposed to our Senior Curator wandering the dimly lit bowels of AWM storage clutching his 1905 Munsell Book of Colours. Of course, in this particular case the artifact can be removed into daylight, where an acceptable colour match for our purposes may indeed be possible.

Gina, you mentioned back in September: "spectrographs of the AWM and AA chip sets remains a high priority for me." Is it possible to get Florite in to spectro the AWM chips? If it's a question of costs I'm happy to contribute.

[Jacques Reed]

Originally Posted by Mike Kelly

I have mentioned this before, a good prospect for finding matt paint is modern external house paint , it is usually water based and it's freely available in hardware stores .

Here is another option for solvent based enamels:

I was supplied the following tin of Viponds matting agent by my famous "We thought it was a once off tint so we did not bother to write down the tint formula". paint supplier for KG-J.
At least they seem to have gotten one thing right.

Viponds is an Australian product made in Melbourne and should be readily available.

I had good success with it even if I did not have success with the paint formula being reproducible.

The Wattyl Agricultural enamel only comes in gloss so they suggested the Viponds agent would be the way to make it Semi-gloss or eggshell.

As shown below the left chip is gloss Wattyl enamel as tinted and the right one is 1:8 ratio of tint to paint to get a "satin finish" as per their instructions.
It can be used as high as 1:4 ratio to get a "low sheen finish".

Cheers

[Mrs Vampire]

sorting through the paint samples I note here some anomalies.

The Canberra set of seventeen plates are somewhat different to both the Australian standard and the Berger colour chart.

The Australian standard has fifteen colours and include O warm sand ( which appears to be close to the British desert colour and R red .

The Berger sheet has only 11 colours J.K,L,M,N,P,Q,R,S,T, U,...missing O Warm sand

None of the colour charts have Tarmac save for the sample in the archive in Melbourne it is no where else and W light Earth also only in the archive in Melbourne.
R red is in both the the Australian standard and the Berger chart.

The RAAF colours as depicted in the spartan chart are both very different to the army colours and have a quite different range. RAAF foliage Green for instance bears little resemblance to the Army Foliage green.

I have yet to examine Dakins discourse with they RAAF however it seems clear at the moment they were on a very different trajectory. Dakin does say he had a very good relationship with the RAAF and they were keen to take his advice.

If I can get my hands on a Spartan chart I will add it to the book and hunt down the colours history. Without a chart there is little point in pursuing it.

I will take a gander at the Canberra chips in a few weeks but the samples in Melbourne I feel are the best given their lack of exposure to light over time.

I will also do a set of trial chips and send them of to Mike.... well both Mikes ....Cecil and Starmers. the latter mainly as a help to his work and an opinion on our KG3 and warm sand O

Here are the samples of the first eleven