Oh no! Not Olive Drab! Sorted thanks.

[Guest]

All this sounds like I'm being really picky. Honest, I'm not. I just want something reasonably close. Whatever colour I pick, there will be folks who will say it's too light/dark, or too green/brown, or too matt/shiny. I want to look at the finished article and be able to say 'That looks pretty good to me'.

That, I think, is the most important thing. But to do it, if you ask me, you need to understand what the real colour was in the first place. In this particular case, the pitfalls are to assume it’s a green (like many people, model paint manufacturers included, do), which obviously makes it look too green, and to use the USAAF/USAF olive drab, which is notably darker than US Army OD for ground vehicles. The latter is not too bad, until you take scale effect into account: a model appears darker than the real thing, and using USAAF dark OD will make that even worse, so you end up with a model looking almost black.

Once you realise these things, you can probably find something that looks right to you. My recommendation for a 1:35–1:72 model of a Second World War model, would be to pick an OD intended as an FS 595 match (that is, FS 34087), because that’s lighter than real wartime OD and so probably matches fairly well for scale effect.

[spanner570]

:dizzy::dizzy::dizzy: Chris and Dave, I think I need to send you both membership forms for the 'Near Enough Club', Which, judging by the forms I've sent out, is expanding daily here on S.M..

Being a founder member of the N.E.C, I've find certain folks ignore my builds, realizing it's a waste of time pulling me up on paint colour, etc. and allow me to pootle along in my 'That looks about right' bubble.... :upside: I heartily recommend it.

There are too many variables regarding 'Correct' paint colour/ shade on a finished model. Even a batch of paint from the same factory might have had a slightly different shade. Even today, ceramic tiles, and wall paper have a shade number on the box / roll, and will be a slightly different shade from the previous batch.

Keep in mind sun bleaching etc., all play a part in colour, shade, tone differences.

It's your model and as long as you are happy with the end result that is all that matters.

[Gern]

:dizzy::dizzy::dizzy: Chris and Dave, I think I need to send you both membership forms for the 'Near Enough Club', Which, judging by the forms I've sent out, is expanding daily here on S.M..

I think there's been a snafu in the paperwork somewhere at your end Ron. I filled in your form and sent it, along with my membership fee to you a few years ago. I thought it was a lifetime membership fee. Is my subscription due for renewal or summat?

[Tim Marlow]

Don’t know about you Dave, but I wouldn’t join a club that would have me as a member
Agree ref. Colour though.....so many things influence it’s appearance that I’m surprised people still make such a fuss about colour accuracy.....dimensional accuracy is important, proportion even more so, but not absolute colour. It can’t even be easily measured without specialist equipment , especially complex colours like brown....the only colour worse for matching is grey...

[Gern]

Don’t know about you Dave, but I wouldn’t join a club that would have me as a member

I wouldn't normally Tim, but Ron told me there was a special deal on - and I can't resist a bargain.

Agree ref. Colour though.....so many things influence it’s appearance that I’m surprised people still make such a fuss about colour accuracy.....dimensional accuracy is important, proportion even more so, but not absolute colour. It can’t even be easily measured without specialist equipment , especially complex colours like brown....the only colour worse for matching is grey...

I did a list a few years ago on here with all the variables I could think of that would affect both the colour of the paint, and our perception of the colour we see. I got to over twenty items, so I'm really not that fussed - but you got to try and start with something close, then let the experts argue over what you did wrong.

Jakko - I've checked and the VMA equivalent to FS 34087 is their 71.043 which they describe variously as Braunviolett RLM 81 and US Olive drab. It looks more brown than green (yeah - on my 'puter screen) so I'll add some to my next order with John.

Gary (topgazza) - You suggested 71.247 Light Olive which also seems to be a brownish colour so I'll try that too.

KarlW - I got some of the VMC 70887. I'm not sure it's an updated version of the 71043. It's Model Colour, not Model Air and looks decidedly green rather than brown.

And all this for a model which may not get built!

[spanner570]

I think there's been a snafu in the paperwork somewhere at your end Ron. I filled in your form and sent it, along with my membership fee to you a few years ago. I thought it was a lifetime membership fee. Is my subscription due for renewal or summat?

Sorry Dave. I've had a word with my secret harry, and she produced your form, but no fee. She has confessed to sending it to her fifth cousin in Fiji, who is making a replica of the Kon- Tiki, and needed more funds to complete the job.....

Tim, just to confirm, your Lifetime Membership is acknowledged with this post.

Thor Heyerdahl jnr.

P.S. Dave, just read your last post. Keep in mind, there is no such thing/ being as an expert!

[Gern]

Sorry Dave. I've had a word with my secret harry, and she produced your form, but no fee. She has confessed to sending it to her fifth cousin in Fiji, who is making a replica of the Kon- Tiki, and needed more funds to complete the job.....

Tim, just to confirm, your Lifetime Membership is acknowledged with this post.

Thor Heyerdahl jnr.

Well that explains it. No problem as the money has gone to such a worthy cause, and I'm glad to hear there's no problem with my membership of your fine club.

[Gern]

P.S. Dave, just read your last post. Keep in mind, there is no such thing/ being as an expert!

Sure there is if you take the literal meaning of the word:

Ex = has been

spurt = drip under pressure

[KarlW]

KarlW - I got some of the VMC 70887. I'm not sure it's an updated version of the 71043. It's Model Colour, not Model Air and looks decidedly green rather than brown.

I meant a later as in the way OD changed over time.

[Gern]

I meant a later as in the way OD changed over time.

Aahh! I thought you meant Vallejo had changed and updated their colour. With you now.

[Guest]

you got to try and start with something close

Agreed — you’re never going to get it right for everyone, but if you can rationalise the colour (to yourself, at least) then you’re good, I’d say.

Jakko - I've checked and the VMA equivalent to FS 34087 is their 71.043 which they describe variously as Braunviolett RLM 81 and US Olive drab.

I’ve got a few bottles of that, which I use these days for American OD when spraying, and also a bottle of Gunze Sangyo Mr. Hobby H52 for brush-painting. They’re not the same, but since I wouldn’t touch up one with the other, that doesn’t matter.

And all this for a model which may not get built!

Isn’t that half the fun of being an Advanced Modeller™?

[Guest]

So, with 12 hours to kill on a quiet day at work, and all the toys of a £1M bodyshop at my disposal, here's how Olive Drab, FS 34087, would have officially looked when brand new. No doubt there would have been variations as mentioned earlier due to batches being made slightly differently, mixing in the field with whatever was available etc., but this is the "benchmark" shade as it were, 1942-1959, according to the information I have.

[ATTACH]391700[/ATTACH]

Wet paint in the pot in the middle, natural finish on the left, matt clearcoat on the right.

Pretty much a 50/50 mix of a yellow oxide colour and black, which would tie up with one story I heard that they just added black to primer to make a low visibility colour.

A completely meaningless excersise, but it passed some time for me today :smiling5:

[Gern]

So have you calculated how many 1/35 tanks you could paint with that?

Better still, have you worked out how much you could sell it for at around £2.50 for 17ml?

[Guest]

No, but probably a lot :smiling5:

I only mixed 100ml, which is about as low we can go. The pot just looks full because they fit on the spray gun upside down so it swirls around and sticks to the sides.

There's plenty left so I'm going to see how it goes though an airbrush.

[Guest]

So, with 12 hours to kill on a quiet day at work, and all the toys of a £1M bodyshop at my disposal, here's how Olive Drab, FS 34087, would have officially looked when brand new.

Cool! :thumb2:

1942-1959, according to the information I have.

Since I’ve been going on in some detail about this colour, I’ll need to say something here too In that time period, there was no FS 34087 olive drab — it was Quartermaster Corps colour No. 9 olive drab, or Corps of Engineers colour No. 22 olive drab, or ANA 613 olive drab, all of which were the same colour. After that , FS 595 came out and introduced the FS *4087 number for olive drab, but in the mid-1960s, something went wrong and the matt shade (34087) was made lighter than the gloss (14087) and semi-gloss (24087) variants. Which leaves me wondering which shade you’ve actually mixed there

Pretty much a 50/50 mix of a yellow oxide colour and black, which would tie up with one story I heard that they just added black to primer to make a low visibility colour.

That makes sense, given that the original formulation was ochre plus black pigments, though I don't known in what ratio (nor what exact pigments ).