I have been trying many, many times to get the color correct on the SR-71’s I have built. The main body, the color of which has been called blue/black, needs to be such that when the carbon/carbon leading edges are painted you see a difference. I can get the CC, but have not been able to get the main bady. Does anyone have any ideas here? I am not looking for an exact match, which would be hard to do since the original had iron in it, but something that is a black I have never seen in a bottle.
As an aside, a color idea for the main landing tires. Greys just do not seem to work, but this is not as critical as the body.
Does anyone have any ideas? I would really appreciate any help.
I’ve had the best result getting the color of those composite edges on the Blackbird family by masking them off and using a slightly glossier overcoat on them. It gives them a different light reflection, and they appear darker. Since they are made of composite material, and the rest of the skin is titanium, even though no two photos of a Blackbird have the same color, the sharp edges of the fuselage tend to be a constant black. As for the blue-black, which it officially was, I’ve added a couple of drops of insignia blue to the black, but it never made much difference. As I said, no two are ever alike. For instance, a blackbird that just came back from a white-hot operational mission will have that burnt-in blue shade to it, with a little gloss. But a plane just out of IRAN or the paint shop just looks like a featureless mass of sinister, totally flat black. There’s one more method that, depending on the paint you use, will provide interesting and satisfying results. Paint the airplane with the powderiest flat black surface you’ve ever paintd. Put it on as thick as you dare, but not sloppy enough to hide the detail or make it look amateurish. Now, take a course piece of coarse cloth, like linen, and start buffing. You’ll be amazed at the result. It gives it an ever so slight sheen that is impossible to duplicate with any kind of clear coat.
Tom
also look into Model Masters Interior Black. It is awesome. Ad a drop of dk Blue to it and you should be dead on.
PS the buffing think works miracles
Solilai
Here is a picture of the main gear on my 1/48 Blackbird I did a couple of years ago. I used Testors titanium for the sidewalls, and dark brown for the hubs. I think it matched some pictures from my references. Hope it helps, btw, which kit/scale are you building?[?]
Hope to see it when your done![;)]
Thanks for the answers. I am going to try, and some may not agree, to use Krylon’s Ultra Flat Black for the body and buff. A finished coat is very rough and there is a lot to work with without having to put a number of coats on.
Maybe one day I’ll grind iron into a powder and mix it with black and see what that does since the original did that.
I also use the interior black for a lot of things. It is one of the best blacks I have used.
But I did not think of buffing this plane, thanks.
Thanks for the ideas on the tires. Right now I am on my third 1/48 Testors kit. I have been obsessed with this plane since I don’t know when. I just wish there was a kit with some details. The Testors is nice because of the “windows” on the bottom for recon gear. I buit gear placed over the windows on one and put in some “grain of wheat blubs” and can turn them on to add some light inside to see the recon gear. Next is to add detail to gear bays.
Trumpeter had,(has), a 1/72 scale that had engines and you could remove the panels. I have one but have not started yet. The J58’s look sort of like they were built from the inside out so ther is a lot to the outside one can add. But there is not a lot of room. I like the Testors kit the best. There is enough room to add pitot tubes around the inlets as well as down links for real time data transmission used on later flights.
By the way, your wheels look very good and you take nice pictures.
There is no reason to apologize for using Krylon spray on a solid-color kit of this size. When I finally get off my butt and fulfill my obligation to the shop that gave me the kit, I will paint my AMT XB-70 with Krylon Satin White. And I used Krylon black for my Testors SR-71 (and when you do that excellent sister kit of the YF-12, plan to go through a king’s ransom on titanium Metalizer. A lot of Metalizer goes a little way, as you all know.)
It’s absurd to paint a model this large with a standard airbrush. Yes, you get a thinner coat of paint, but just try to get any consistency in the thickness/thinness of that coat between the radome and the tailcone. And that doesn’t even consider the tremendous waste of expensive model paint. (Considering what we pay per half-ounce, the average model paint is tremendously expensive stuff, around $200 per quart.)
So use that spray can wisely, just don’t overdo it and lose your detail. Start with the thinnest coat and build up. It’s hard for me to resist doing it all in one coat, and that’s the worst thing you can do, especially with gloss colors. The pigment is bigger in the Krylon and other household spray paints, so you really want to go easy on them because you can lose scale effect. It doesn’t seem logical that pigment size would do that, but it really does affect how your model appears in scale.
Tom
PS: If you add ground iron to your paint all you will get – let me see, how can I put this scientifically? – you will get nothing more than a glob of gunk. Trust me, I’ve seen it tried. Just because they used ironball paint on these craft in the early days, it wasn’t the same as just putting metal filings in the paint. The microscopic balls were an alloy that were somehow cast in what was thought to be a perfect shape for reflecting radar waves. It wasn’t there to affect the color, and probably didn’t.
The Blackbirds were gloss black? I’ve always thought of them as flat…
solilai;
well from my experience and being within a few feet of the ole Blackbird, the color you want is called Indigo Blue what can do is get the darkest Blue you can find and add some black to it just enought to get it almoast black but it’ll have the HUE of DK Blue I’ve use Testors MM DK Sea Blue FS 35042 and added some black to it and shot it with my airbrush, and every 71’s paint has a slightly different hue to them so it doesn’t have to be perfect just close and it’ll turn heads, then I sealed it paint with Future and Testors Dullcoat, also in the whell well they are bare Titanium because paint will melt or flack off, so piant them a Orangish Steel ( more steel though ) color, as for the gear themselves they are also Bare Titanium, and the main gear tires are a Silver-Dark Greyish color with the hubs a Dark Rust Brown (almost Blackish Rust for the use of the brakes when on landing rollout) the nose gear tires looked closer to a Metallic Blackish color with Titanium hubs, I hope this will help you out
Some years ago I built a 1/48 Blackbird and had the same thoughts about producing the metallic hue on the black. Ended up spraying the bird with Humbrol matt black, buffing gently with a cloth, and then buffing again with a cloth which had graphite dust in it (simply rub a 5B pencil on a piece of sandpaper and catch the dust on a piece of paper, then wipe the cloth in it). This was then buffed onto the model and the finished result does take on a metallic hue! If you did not know how it was done, you would be at a loss to work out how it was done! The finished result does give a metallic tint to the black, and the result pleased me. Have a try on an old model first - matt black spray; buff gently; buff with graphite on the cloth - and see what you think. Hope this helps.
I was kidding about adding iron. It does change the color of the paint once the craft reaches operating speeds and there is a slight blue. I alomost liken it to gun blue of a rifle. The skin, to me, looked flatter than the CC leading edges which were, to me, slightly flatter with a bit of white. I really do not know how to explain that any better. Maybe a graying effect, but very slight.
I have found the Krylon Ultra Flat Black to work when, as one pointed out above, it is polished a bit. Adds uneven tones one could not get by hand. I did that the other day. That paint, after a few coats feels like 400 grit sandpaper. A lot to work with.
NASA shattered the SR-71’s speed record for an air breathing engine recently. Did anyone see that? I really do not think it is fair to even put the speeds of these two craft together. Really does not say anything to me.
As for the XB-70 I have not put mine together yet. Do you remember the picture after the first flight when a large part of the "white paint made for high temp. came off, and by the time the test was over probably 75% of the plane lost its white coat. Amazing plane though. At Wright Pat it is againts the wall in the back and stretches beyond the SR-71 and over the top of a B-52 on stands.