Paint manufacturers (Testors is particularly guilty of this) create their own paint formulations and names at will based on various factors/influences to create “their” brand/shade of paint…sometimes those have bearing on accurate names and colors, sometimes not. Testors has names for some of their paints that are complete fabrications (like Afrika Khakibraun) that sound nice and authentic but really are just descriptive. [;)] Modeler’s love to create their own terms as well and errors in terminology get picked up and repeated in print and also online depending…so some terms like ‘signalbraun’ get into the lexicon but end up meaning different things to different people.
The reason the J&D scans are frequently offered up as the holy grail is simple…they are based off a set of original pre-war RAL paint chips in well-preserved condition and J&D worked directly with RAL to research and recreate the colors faithfully in the chips they produced in their work. J&D also work only off original source material in the original German which from a historical research standpoint grants them a degree of credibility and reliability that is often not present in other sources that rely on 2nd or 3rd hand secondary sources. It doesn’t make them infallible but it does make them authoritative. Ultimately thtat’s the determining factor when it comes down to which source should be taken over another when there’s a conflict or disagreement between different authors or sites. [:)]
Given that those J & D scans are NOT evenly-tinted nor uniform across the image in any way, I guess I just remain unsure as to which portion - if any - of the scan best represents the putative colors of the chips that were scanned! In terms of color representation SCANs presented on almost any computer display screen are seldom very compelling. For example, one can scan a dollar - bill - the display image is really not very compelling on most equipment folks might have access to. It’ll certainly look like a bill with the pattern and all, but the colors will be off. You CAN, on the other hand, PRINT that scan onto proper paper with a high-res color laser printer and get a seriously good-looking dollar-bill! A print of the scan MAY be more comparable to seeing the chip then would seeing its image on the back-lit screen!
What would be much more compelling to me then any scans would be for someone to make the paint… I am sure that those old RAL standards came with pigment formularies - otherwise they would mean zilch as any sort of practical production standard for a product that was going to possibly be made by multiple vendors (barring of course that they ref’d, say, some spectrographic analysis that used standard lab instruments and techniques…). !
I would bet that there was one or more established formulae - available to a paint manufacturer who wanted to make the officially-acceptable dunkelgrau or dunkelgelb or signalbraun or… and sell it to the Wehrmacht - and no, I doubt that this was done by merely submitting sample cans of paint and arguing with the inspector over whether that was really the specified color or not![:D]
Do you know whether anyone has bothered pursuing this angle or approach? Seeking some documentation on the pigment formulae used to create the color? I’m sure that these formulae are neither still protected under any patent (after 80 years?) nor any sort of industrial, let alone state, secret![:O]
WAIT! Isn’t that what Testor’s has claimed they have done - get the data on the paints?[:#]
It would seem sort of obvious that a paint manufacturer would get those chips and try to match the colors on them, as versus flogging around trying to just guess the color…! But, like they say, common sense is not as common nor as sensible as sometimes thought to be!
There was a Five page thread on the subject over at Armorama, our very own wbill76 was there. I think everyone involved acknowledged the existence of the document order for brown over grey camou. Very heated debate though on the wording and the extant to which it was followed. Opinions varied from all tanks were painted thusly (with no room for single grey colour during the Polish and French campaigns) to some still believing a good pecentage were repainted without the brown.
J&D state in the same volume where they produce the chips that this is what they did…with the small caveat of replicating a matt color on a glossy paper print as a small distortion. As to how the various paint manufacturers come up with their paint formulations, there are many variables at work there…especially if they developed their formula some time ago (as Testors has for example, their MM line of enamel paints is virtually unchanged from a decade ago or longer) and don’t have any kind of economic motivation to change their formula now. (Think about it, they can actually sell MORE paint if you have to mix your own combo than if they changed their existing formula with all the costs/production mods associated with that process). That’s why newer manufacturers, particularly those providing acrylic paints, often have different shades under the same names but which tend to be more accurate depending on the state of information available when they devised their formulas vs. older established brands who have no reason to change. [;)]
jgeriatric, thanks for posting that link and the pic to answer the 38(t) question. It’s one of my favorite pics of the 2-tone scheme…nice and shiny new right outside the depot and with perfect lighting to show the contrast.
Looks like you got a good balance between the colors and produced a good dusty effect! The lighting makes it look harsher than it is I’m sure (going by the sharp shadows). Direct lighting can do that depending on the camera setup you’re using. Nicely done! [Y]
As none of us were there and any photo reproduction of a color may or may not be accurate, if it looks good to you then it’s perfect. Your Pz II looks good to me. Job well done.
