 cruichin wrote: |
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I stopped by the LHS to get a bottle of MM Acryl Haze Grey 5-H. They were out and the owner said that MM Marine was discontinued, so there would be no more. I picked up a rattle can of Tamiya Haze Grey, no bottle paint in Tamiya either.
Does anyone have any info on this, or alternatives to MM for good naval colors?
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Yes, Testors has discontinued that line of paints. They never supported it well, and required vendors to purchase a new rack (paired with fantasy figure paints). It was not integrated into their standard product line. Testor's dropped the ball on the product line.
Tamiya's Haze Gray is a neutral gray (i.e. it does not tend toward one of the other colors). It may be acceptable for modern USN Haze. The spec for that is 27270. Testors MM Neutral Gray is 36270 (over coat the flat with satin for the proper sheen). The Tamiya paint is not really proper for a WWII US ship. The Acryl II 5-H Haze Gray is a gray with a definate purple-blue tint. It is much lighter than MM Neutral Gray.
Accuracy is a subjective thing. I will leave it up to you to define your own personal definition as to what is accurate.
Your alternatives:
1) Mix your own. John Snyder of WEM and Randy Short of shipcamouflage.com produced a set of standard paint ships based on their research. John Snyder of WEM was a paint conservator in a previous career and developed the chips based on actual paint locker and surface scrapings and paint specifications. These chip sets are available from several sources (try shipcamouflage.com first). Mix your own paint using the chips as a reference.
2) White Ensign's Colourcoat line of paints. These are enamels. The colors ae considered to be the most accurate out there. John Snyder used his paint chip experiece to help produce these paints. They are available from White Ensign, shipcamouflage.com, Floating Drydock, Pacific Front Hobbies and several other online vendors. In addition to USN colors they have US pre-war, RN, German, Japanese, and modern colors for several navies. (The Acryl II line was not as broad). WEM has expanded to aircraft and armor colors.
3) PollyScale acrylics. PollyScale has someWWII naval colors in their standard line. These paints are close, but not totally correct, when compared to the S&S chips or Colourcoats.
I have a stock of AcrylII and both the PollyScale and the Colourcoats. My personal preference is for the Colourcoats. They airbrush beautifully. They do tend to take a bit longer to dry, but where can you find an 'accurate' pre-Spanish American war stack buff?
edit => I see I was nine minutes behind John @ WEM he posted while I was composing.