Wireless Set No. 52 Canadian - Project

[David Dunlop]

I have been off this thread for a couple of days nearly, waiting for some paint to dry and my head to clear of things 52 for a while.

I found a small piece of plastic in the shop last week and primed it and painted a strip of the Gloss Navy Grey across one end of it. This was the colour match I had done to the Access Door Assembly off the Sender panel a few weeks ago. It has been a while since I worked with enamel-based pants and I had quite forgotten the drying times required for them. This particular one requires 16 hours between coats. That timed out to 04:00 local time this morning but at Noon today it is still definitely off gassing and feels soft to the touch. I am thinking a good two weeks to cure hard would not be unreasonable at room temperatures.

In the two photos I have attached today, I have placed the test strip on the plastic between the Access Door Assembly and the Sender front panel in the daylight in the back garden. It would be extremely helpful if you could take a look at the photos and provide me feedback on how good a match this paint is to the wartime originals in you opinions.

I will fill you in later on why I am making this request, to reduce any biases in opinions.

Thanks in advance,

David

[Bruce Parker (RIP)]

Hey David, I have some good news and some bad news. The bad is that paint matching is a mugs game. Change the light and what you thought was a match isn't. Varnish and what was a perfect match reacts and no longer is. Then, even if you match perfectly, the old and new finishes will weather differently anyway.

Oh, right, the good news. Our eyes aren't getting any younger so we won't notice!!

[Chris Suslowicz]

Hi David, I was about to make a complete fool of myself by saying it was much too light and matched the primer more than the finish colour - then I noticed the outline between the top of the door and the main panel...

It looks like a _very_ close match to me.

Best regards,
Chris.

[David Dunlop]

Thanks for your responses, Gentlemen. Much appreciated.

I was curious what an impartial, uninvested eye saw when looking at these images.

We seem to be living in a world today that has become very ‘Flat Biased’ when it comes to paint finishes. They can hide a lot of mistakes and sloppy workmanship, unlike their glossy cousins, and I cannot, for the life of me recall when, if ever before, I have ever purchased a glossy paint, or even had one matched.

The flat Olive Green I had matched a year ago for the three wood equipment boxes for the 52-Set was spot on perfect and I have never had issues before with colour matched paints from our local RONA Store. This Gloss Navy Grey has been a whole different ball game.

For the boxes, the new paint was going to be needed on the replacement interior partition, where if it was off by any amount, it would be hidden. When it came time to tidy up the exteriors of the three boxes, they would all be entirely repainted and new stencils applied, so they would all match. Again, no big deal if the colour match was off a bit.

This Gloss, Navy Grey on the other hand is primarily a touch up on the Sender front panel and will be used for an entire redo of the Supply Unit front panel when the time comes. If it was off a little bit with the Supply Unit, it would be standing on its own and any variation would be sitting away from the other three components of the main 52-Set, so not a real problem. As a Sender touch up paint, my mind has steadily blown this up into a very big problem. The last thing I want is a mismatch significant enough the repair work looks like the first lesson at a One Eyed Clown Painting Class.

When the paint was first matched, I thought it was a very good match at the store, factoring in wet paint always has a slightly different tone to it than when it dries. To be absolutely certain before I started the touch up work, I prepared the small sample plate I posted about last. When I put the three pieces together to test out the match, what I found was that the initial glance at the three pieces together looked spot on perfect regarding the actual colours, the sample plate was very hard to spot. When my eyes did finally find and focus on it, a very odd thing started to happen. As I stared at it, it became much more noticeable and actually took on a very distinctive green grey colouration. If I blinked, or glanced away and back again for a moment, the sample disappeared and then re-emerged and quickly took on the green grey appearance once more. I began to strongly suspect my mind was so worried about the possibility of a serious mismatch; it was actually creating one to satisfy the pre-existing condition I had created in my head.

So that is why I turned it over to the MLU experts for their opinion. Chris’ reaction was identical to my initial one, as was my lovely wife’s after I dragged her into the survey as well. Bruce identified a key issue with the paint as well.

I am now quite comfortable in regards to the actual colour; this is a very good match to the original Navy Grey. It most definitely, however, is different from the original Navy Grey regarding the gloss. This modern paint base has a lot more gloss to it than the original 75 year old paint does when I compare the two in daylight or indoors. The increased gloss reflects more light than the original paint and that has the effect of lightening or darkening the colour tone of the paint, more than the original. It is possible, when moving the two pieces around, side by side in the light, to easily reach a sweet spot in the reflections where the colour tones of the two paints suddenly match. So.

What I think I am going to do is let the paint sample continue to cure for a while longer and then mask off half of it. I will then polish the other half and compare the two sections. I am thinking the polishing process with the same polish I used to clean the panel with, should cut back the gloss enough to solve the problem. I have lots of other things to deal with for the Project in the meantime.

So thanks again for the feedback, as it was very helpful.

David

[Jordan Baker]

I’ve found Tremclad Gloss light machine grey is a very close match. I’ve used it on some pieces and was quite happy with it.

https://www.rustoleum.ca/product-cat...Machine%20Gray

[Chris Suslowicz]

Surface finish makes one Hell of a difference to the apparent colour. The classic example being BS381C 499 Service Brown which apparently originated as SCC (Standard Camouflage Colour) No.2 but as applied today as a gloss finish on (metal) ammunition boxes looks far too dark.

It's visually much lighter on (rough) wooden boxes, or in a matt finish (which you will have great difficulty in buying these days). Matting agent added before spraying is the usual answer to that problem.

If anyone is worried about the final appearance of an original radio, I can only point to the WS52 currently on eBay UK with a starting price of 2995 GBP.

(Interesting definition of "presentable", also "complete" since all the cables and the ATU appear to be missing, along with some screws, and there are no internal photographs.)

Chris.

[David Dunlop]

Wow Chris.

Interesting how complete sets keep turning up. This makes it three I am aware of in the past three years: two in Canada, and now this one in the UK.

It is quite a colour palette, indeed, and you are right, a close look indicates a lot of small pieces are missing, broken or been switched out for none original parts.

What I do wonder about, as you mentioned, are the internals. Notice the four studs on the top central portion of the Carriers No. 4. Was a British Auxilliary Supply Unit fitted to the 52-Set at one time? Not knowing how this conversion was done, and in spite of how hard original Supply Units and Senders are to find these days, the price point seems too high without more knowledge of what has gone on inside the chassis of all three main components.

On the plus side, it looks like it might be a great example of a British Modified Set with regards to the change over from luminous decals to printed markings.

David

[David Dunlop]

Chris.

I did a Serial Number compare earlier this evening and it turns out this particular Receiver was trailing down the Assembly Line in 1944 just 25 units behind mine. Pretty close in the overall scheme of things.

Jordan.

Funny you should mention that paint. I picked up a can of it a couple of years back when I finally had my three receivers all together here. I had noticed some things with the appearance of the receiver panels that jogged my memory of identical things going on 30 years ago with my accumulation of 19-Sets. I better get off my ass now and document it all for posting here.

David