Hi guys, me again with a typical auto-builder question… [:I]
I use Tamiya acrylics. However, I have no idea which ones are the correct colours as indicated by Hasegawa. What is considered to be “gray”, “aircraft gray”, etc? What is normally used in the cockpit, what is the usual “base gray” for the outside of US a/c, what are the darker/lighter shades recomended?
At this stage I use “dark sea grey” (X54?) on the upper panels of the cockpit and found (don’t laugh!) the grey Tamiya primer (canned) to be a good match for the lighter grey in the rest of the cockpit, as per instructions and photo’s. The outside does not worry me that much (yet) as this will be a black bunny, but the next won’t be, so please help!
All feedback will be appreciated. Nothing done that can’t be undone (yet)…
SeaBee,
It may be a plan to have a look at a color chart reference that can give you equivalents for specific brands of paint that match (or come close to) particular FS paint numbers.
Have a look at IPMS Stockholm - there’s a color chard reference guide - very instructional. It’s on: http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/colorcharts/colorcharts.asp
Good luck, mate.
to add to what lee said, go to tamiya and testors, and humbrol websites and browse around they should also have color chips. it will help when you see the discriptions.
Don’t know about you guys, but I found all those sites useless when it comes to Tamiya. Cross references are conflicting or blank. The color chips are so far off the real thing. After hours of looking, I ended up buying ALL the grays and eyeballing it. Especially when taking scale factor into account.
Currently an F4, where I am more interested in the cockpit greys, since the exterior is going to be black. But some F-14’s and F-18’s are waiting…
I was just looking for a general reference on it, to find out more or less what the correlation between Tamiya greys and those in the instructions of Hasegawa’s are. Lee’s site gave me a great start, thanks!
Hey SeaBee;
Hasegawa mostly calls for Gunze paints on their kits so if you could find out if Gunze and Tamiya have a cross referrance list like most other model paint companies have then you’ll be in luck, as for the interiors colors of the modern day Western military planes are closely to FS 36270 Neutral Grey but most people like the color darker or lighter I’ve used Neutral Grey for the base color then weather it with a black wash then dry brush the Dk Ghost Grey or Lt Ghost Grey before I add the detailing colors, also it depends on the effect I want in the front office
Dark Gull Grey (FS36231) is the color you want for the mian cockpit interior color. Tamiya XF-54 is it. Lighten it with white to provide constrast to highlight the interior.