I decided to finish a Tamiya Schwimmwagen using Vallejo Model Air German Grey 71.268 instead of my usual Tamiya German Grey. I finished the interior and thought the Vallejo to be too green. Given I had finished all the interior detail painting, I let it be and assembled the rest of the model. That was a mistake. After painting the exterior I am now left with a largely green vehicle. I picked up Vallejo Model Color German Grey 70.995. It is grey, the airbrushable 71.268 is not. How does Vallejo get away with marketing itself as having accurate military colors and then produce two paints with the same name that are not even comparable. I like the Vallejo dropper bottles. But I am not so sure about the accuracy of what they put in them anymore. Back to Tamiya I guess. But in the meantime I will be fielding a Schwimmwagen that is entirely the wrong color because I cannot redo the interior given the current stage of construction. This is definitely a teachable moment.
Sorry to hear that Paul! I hate when the color turns out wrong. I repainted my F4F Wildcat 3 times trying to get the colors right.
There’s an app you can get for your phone called Hobby Color Converter that I have used to find colors from manufacturers that correspond correctly with the RAL, BS, FS or other manufacturers colors. Just because Model Air 71.268 says it is German Grey, doesn’t mean that it will match your Tamiya paint. The converter app says that 71.308 is a 97% match for XF-63. 71.268 doesn’t even get listed as an equivalent color
That color app looks quite handy. Downloading as I type.
Thanks for the link. A very helpful app indeed. This should certainly help avoid a similar disaster in the future. In the meantime I am resigned to having a green Schwimmwagen. The good news is that the diorama is called “Retreat” and involves engineers planting land mines on a road. The Schwimmwagen is being carried on the engineering vehicle so the story is that the Schwimmwagen is broken down. I will blame its colour on a rogue painter and a lack of supplies at the forward maintenance depot.
Probably an unpopular opinion, as I was opposed to it for a long time but I use AI ( grok, ChatGPT) to mix and match colors now, you can git it a picture or the vehicle paint # and the manufacturer of the paint you’re using and it will spit out paint colors and ratios. Just an idea.
Sadly, not available for iOS. Although, they do offer the .apk file for PC to run on an Android emulator, which I might just try for the heck of it.
For iOS folks, take a look at iModelKit. Not affiliated, YMMV, etc. but I have used that and been pretty happy with it. I actually fell deep down the rabbit hole of mixing paint colors because I started looking at the details and wrote up a function to solve for color mixes in an Excel worksheet, then realized my abject failures were because mixing light and mixing pigments are modeled differently and…ooof, don’t get me started on that.
There’s a lot of room for colors like German Gray,Dunkelgelb,OD,and Russian 4BO
Depends on timeframe color was used,field application,weathering,and fading.Bottom line is try to have enough of one brand for a project,even enough from the same lot.
Unfortunately. just like OD Green, theer was no standard for German Grey. It depended on when and what manufacturer was making the paint, when, where, and by whom it was applied, etc., etc., etc…
The same is true for matching fabrics. The below are all actual German Field Grey (Feld Grau) tunics from WWII.
Wow! That photo of the tunics is eye opening as far as color matches.
The photo says it all. That is quite the variation in colours. I imagine the same would apply to field applied paint jobs for vehicles and tanks, perhaps more so, given the availability of paint, how it is thinned for application and even how it is applied. So maybe I should be less concerned that the Model Air German Grey is more green than grey, but for the fact that Vallejo has the colour available in Model Color and Model Air mixes and they are not the same colour. But I now have a good cover story for my Schwimmwagen. I am close to finished and will post some pictures hopefully by the New Year. Thanks everyone for your input!
Everybody has their favorite shade of something that they like, for example,I like my OD to lean to the brown side,so I use a filter.
Whatever pleases your eye
You certainly got yourself the German “uniform” grey.