German RAL 7028 armor color

jgeratic

Recon89

... various paints being mixed and applied in the field there are many variations.

Well yes and no. Dunkelgelb was a factory applied colour made official in Feb. '43.  There might have been an official change to it's look when it was given the RAL number 7028, as prior to that the shade being used was the same as that applied to farm machinery. 

Main reason various shades can be found is due to the fact there was more than one paint manufacturer, and later in the war, pigments could and would become scarce. 

About ten years ago, Tomas Chory published a book Wehrmacht Heer Camouflage Colors 1939 - 1945, and among his colour chips he provides four examples for dark yellow plus Dunkelgelb nach Muster (the farm machinery paint).  I'd post a link, but even on the internet you can find a variety from just that one scanned page - so I don't know which of the googled images is the most accurate (in terms of his book). 

regards,

Jack

First, is monitor calibration. Though I"m not sure how much stock I place in this variable, some say that different monitors are calibrated differently, so any one given image may look different than the same image viewed on another screen.

But there's also printer variance--has the printer of an image in a book gotten it correct? Photographic "evidence" can't be trusted from the era because of the tendency of colors to fade and decay. And  the other points you bring up are all well-considered Heck, just the fact that two different manufacturers TODAY can get different tones in the tint of any given color is proof of how far off any manufacturer can be, at any time..

Then there is "scale effect" which dictates that any color seen close up in a small swatch will undeniably look lighter on a large surface like a tank.

My opinion is that you can only go so far in saying that a certain paint manufacturer has the "correct" color. The best thing to learn to do is to learn how to mix paints and get the shade you want for THAT MODEL on that particular day. "Ballpark" tints are goog enough to say that the shade you depict is "in the balpark": fo any given day in that model's fictional "life".

Recon89

... various paints being mixed and applied in the field there are many variations.

Well yes and no. Dunkelgelb was a factory applied colour made official in Feb. '43.  There might have been an official change to it's look when it was given the RAL number 7028, as prior to that the shade being used was the same as that applied to farm machinery. 

Main reason various shades can be found is due to the fact there was more than one paint manufacturer, and later in the war, pigments could and would become scarce. 

About ten years ago, Tomas Chory published a book Wehrmacht Heer Camouflage Colors 1939 - 1945, and among his colour chips he provides four examples for dark yellow plus Dunkelgelb nach Muster (the farm machinery paint).  I'd post a link, but even on the internet you can find a variety from just that one scanned page - so I don't know which of the googled images is the most accurate (in terms of his book). 

regards,

Jack

Thanks everyone. Doog you are right, with various paints being mixed and applied in the field there are many variations.

You'd be much better served using Tamiya Dark Yellow with about 30-40% White added. BTW, in German armor, there is no "correct color", anywhere. Al you can hope to do is get a ballpark idea and approximate what generally appears to be the "correct" color. The ideal in Dark Yellow is really a rather pale tan, Any Dunklegelb paint from any manufacturer has to be cut with white to get a "correct" ballpark shade, They're ALL too dark straight out of the can,

In recent years, it has been suggested to use their Afrika Khakibraun RAL 7008 with some white added.  It's not perfect, but is much better than their own brand of Dunkelgelb.

regards,

Jack