We who have AMS (Advanced Modeler Syndrome)...

Ha hA--great anecdote!

I reagularly mix my own "ballpark" mixes instead of obsessing over "correct" colors--there's so much variance in them anyway, with scale dostortion, fading, effects of weathering, etc. 

 

  I got one for ya,when I was stationed in Germany with the 1st Armord Div. myself and about ten other's were assigned to repaint the 109's and 548's in our gun battery.As we were about to bring them over to the wash rack to clean them up before we started painting our first sgt. stopped us and asked us what we were doing."Washing the vehical's before we paint them" I replied.The first sgt looked at me and said "pvt we piant our equipment OD in this unit".Well I guess he could tell by my counfused look that it needed to be made a little clearer,"OD son,over dirt"!

    Ever seen what happen's when you paint over caked on mud and dirt and then it starts to flake off,not pretty.

    "Be very very quiet I'm hunting Troll's"   

 I was in the 1st Armored a time or 2 myself. I remembered when we transitioned from Vulcans to Bradleys after the 1st Gulf war we had the weirdest color.  Like dark european green mixed with sand over painting the sand that was used in the Gulf War scheme.  Crew names were painted in black stencils over a big sand stripe on the front of the turret. I always wanted to make one like that just to get the boo -birds going knowing I am correct cuz I lived in them. They were that way maybe for 8 months to a year before being painted in the standard european scheme with the new CARP paint. I may have to do that sometime though.

I used to obssess about the color to the point of giving up on a build all together because I could not find or decide on the exact match for a color.  After I started to weather and realized that finishing is more than just the final coat of paint,  I stopped obssessing about the exactness of my color selction and started looking at the overall effect.  The elements, combat, even the crews themselves play heck with the full scale subject. 

During Desert Shield when everybody was deploying to the gulf you could hardly find any sand paint. So we had to mix up some stuff ourselves, well some did not come out right and for some unknown reason a lot of the vehicles had a nice pink tone. There is nothing like seeing an M1A1 being painted pink! I remember doing the OD paint schemes alot too!

When stationed in Germany, all the tanks received a base coat of forest green and then received the camo pattern. Soldiers painted the tanks around the clock until they were finished. The soldiers who painted the tanks at night in the semi-lit motor pool were folks on the First Sergeant's _hit list. Needless to say, the paint jobs were not always of the best quality.

The tan markings were often painted on using almond colored spray paint for kitchen appliance touch up. We never had enough of the brown color and often would mix it with the forest green to make it last enough for the tanks. That made for an interesting shade of "brown".

The patterns were chalked onto the tanks by the platoon sergeants and the motor sergeant using a photocopy of a photocopy of a pattern from an old technical manual. They would mark BR where it should be brown and BL where it should be black. Many times crews would confuse the BR for BL. No two patterns were ever alike.

billbirk, and ROb--that info you both gave is just priceless stuff! Thanks for postig it!

As I was watching maintenance working on the bird, I asked them what color paint (neutral gray, medium gray, light gray?) they used for touchup.  One sailor showed me a spray can of gray auto primer!  The same stuff you get from any auto parts store.

Told ya...

This thread deserves a *BUMP*

Cheque6.....what was your Rate?

Dave

I realise it is not exactly the same as the fields we are talking about, but I was in the auto paint game for a fair while (supplying, not applying) & some of the stuff I read on the subject of paint accuracy humours me to say the least.

White & black are the two biggest ones - some people stress to rather high degrees on a specifc colour on a model, & then when it comes to an area (such as a aircraft underside) that is white or black, the obligatory Tamiya or whatever brand white or black is applied, as if white is white & black is black.

Black not so much, but white to a high degree is never simply white, no white would ever be straight white of any sort & would often be made with the addition of over 10 different tints. When you think how many car manufacturs there are out there, the fact that they will have at least one current white & several legacy whites & each of these will have several shade variations, it makes you think.

Sure in the military, white is white - but exactly what white was it - XF-2 - I doubt it.  

bilbirk

During Desert Shield when everybody was deploying to the gulf you could hardly find any sand paint. So we had to mix up some stuff ourselves, well some did not come out right and for some unknown reason a lot of the vehicles had a nice pink tone. There is nothing like seeing an M1A1 being painted pink! I remember doing the OD paint schemes alot too!

So Operation Petticoat, may have been more documentary than comedy?

 

Airmil, during college I worked in the paint department of a hardware store. You are not kidding about white, I think 1/4 of the paint chips were "white" Navajo white, egg shell white, soft white, buttermilk etc.

My favorites while working there were the guys who would come in and buy a bunch of our mismatched paints which of course were heavily marked down, usually it was just a guy buying a can of close enough for something that just needed some paint, pump house, utility closet etc. I asked a guy who was buying a whole cartful of the paint what he was going to do with all that paint. He said he had an old shed to paint, so all that paint was going into a trash can, and the shed was going to be painted whatever shade of brown all that paint mixed up became.

Awesome thread guys! Love reading these stories.

Josh

When our vehicles were being repainted from the MERDC to the NATO scheme, all the Dueces went to OMS for repaint, but the 1/4 tons were the driver's to repaint... We painted every single one of them with rattle-cans... The OD was GI and actually had an FS number, but the brown and black were Rustoleum and Krylon, everything from wood-brown to high-heat black..

Also, whether the had it or not, each vehicle was stenciled that it had been painted with CARC...

 

Funny thing is that even with the strictest regs,,,,sometimes the color you're getting yelled at to paint on something is NOT what the regs say,,,,even if it matches perfectly by the numbers

Want to have a fun discussion, with lots of laughing at anecdotal stories,,,,get ahold of a guy in Navair during the 60s and 70s,,,,,ask him about White,,,,,there's an FS chip for it,,,,and a famous model paint maker matched to it really well,,,,,but,,,,they also have a paint in their line that matches the "as actually seen" white,,,,with the same Insignia White name,,,,,,BuAir listed Insignia White, and provided a color card, and cans of paint,,,,,and then promptly said "no tinting medium is authorized to be used",,,,,so, we couldn't mix the paint to get the "correct" shade to match the card

they also "disauthorized" the use of names,,,,,tried to anyway with each new FS release,,,,but,,,,it was wasted effort, because for every "new guy" to come up, there was an "old hand" around that still used the names,,,,,bringing forth lots of "cheat sheets" with FS numbers and color names,,,,decades after the decision was made to stop using names,,,,,,,,I joined 15 or so years after the names were discontinued,,,,,and still learned all the names

I only give "exact colors" so that a new modeler has a starting point,,,,from there, it's all his own interpretation on how he wants his model to look,,,,,,,,if at the beginning of a cruise,,,,,,they were "exact",,,,,,from then on,,,,,game's on as to what they were touched up with (I say "exact" because it would have been hard to change a plane from the color specs when they had just been assigned for the cruise in the "newest condition", ie New build or Post NARFed,,,,,,,,airframe swapping when one units takes over equipment from a departing unit,,,,yuk,,,,,brand new Modex and trim on a plane that's served for at least a year)

we need to look at the different paint types in use at different times, and for different purposes,,,,,,it's not true that "paint is paint", lol,,,,,the paint used to re Modex was not the same formula as the Polyurethane paint the Gull Gray and White were,,,,,,you could literally clean off the "304" on the nose and the "VA-203" and the word "Navy" off the plane with buckets of thinner and mops,,,,,,,and then stencil on "11" and "VMA-543" and "Marines" on the Skyhawks (Just an example,,,,,I don't remember seeing any of 203's birds in person)

same with the changes in all the "morale boosting" pretty color schemes,,,,,just "wash them off and spray on new ones" with a different stencil set

so, since we have to start somewhere,,,,,I start from the regs, knowing that at least my unit didn't go and get "close to Gull Gray" from Wal Mart

Rex

USMC 75 to 79,,,,,,captured by a MARTD in 75, and never released, lol

All this talk about mismatched paint, particularly white has reminded me of a story from many years ago;

At the motor factor where I worked, we had a particular customer who had a reputation of being a copulating breast, the guy was in his mid forties, was extremely arrogant & was car proud way past the level of OCD. This is the sort of guy who would shout out of his window at the (dry tarmac) road for getting his car dirty & call the police if children were spotted within the 10 foot exclusion zone that his car traveled everywhere with.

Anyway, at the time the gentleman had not long purchased a very sought after whaletail Ford Sierra RS Cosworth, at a time when these were like rocking horse excrement, everyone wanted one & the wainting lists was longer than the UK WW2 debt list to the USA, it was at the time THE car for everyone not in the Ferrari / Lambo league to have & he knew it.

So one day, much to the amusement of most locals, Mr facetious has a little bump in his pride & joy, he contacts the best paint sprayer money could buy at the time, who duly goes to Henry to order a genuine front wing (fender), door skin, fittings & paint. But Henry doesn't supply paint to the aftermarket, which infuriates Mr Rectum, who then goes on to call around all the houses at FoMoCo in UK & Europe demanding, but not getting any "Genuine Ford" paint.

Mr Organ eventually arrives at us bemoaning the situation & I inform him that I can mix him a tin of PPG paint matched not only to the exact Ford color, but to the exact shade of that exact color, I go on to tell him that PPG are currently the automotive paint top dog & that this is who the paint on his car was actually made by - but I can clearly see from the look on his face that I don't have a sale.

Getting slightly enraged by the attitude of this little man, my boss steps in & informs him that he is sympathetic with his plight & has an inside contact at Ford in Germany, & that if "You leave it with me, I will see what I can do".

So about a week later, Mr (enter expletive here) arrives in to personally inspect & collect this tin of automotive nectar & is delighted. He has got his hands on a tin of paint which has a Ford logo on it & is delighted to pay ten-fold the price of a regular 2.5L tin of paint as we went out of our way to help him & there were "international, hazardous air freight charges" on it. Said gentleman even came back following the repair to show us how perfectly the paint matched & how impressed he was with our service!

 

 

What the guy didn't know was that my boss had said "Copulate him" & that I had mixed the paint on our PPG scheme without even checking his car for shade variation (he got the "if in doubt" mid tint). The guys wallet was lightened by £300, not bad for a £30 tin of paint!

  

You gave him what he wanted (and good and hard!) which IMHO is good customer service!

Yes, well hard. It's nearly twenty years on & I still occasionally see the guy - on the outside I walk past ignoring him, but on the inside am still falling over laughing. The humor value was / still is so high that myself & my boss would happily give him the £270 difference each - now there is a thought, as he would naturally want to know what the money was for