The Ship Model Forum

It's not the 507 C that is flawed it's the G 45 that looks yellowed to my eye. I bought it from WEM. The S&S paint chip is also yellowed.
John

I will give all sorts of props and thanks to John (Snyder) & Randy (Short) for the work they've done. But all of us are human and can make mistakes, or rely on something we were sure was accurate at the time. I surprised John once by demonstrating he was wrong about something in US paint, but he's corrected me more times and it's really about having multiple eyeballs on things.

The trick with stuff like this in today's age is to be open about it and bring the sources out for people to buy into themselves or discuss until the matter is settled. This, however, isn't at all efficient for a company and can in fact cost sales by aiding competitors. We may desire historical accuracy, but it really is quite messy when one gets down to it. My goal, silly as it may seem, is to use British sourced paints and detail sets on all of my Royal Navy subjects so you do tend to have my loyalty,* small as that order or two may be.

* it also helps that I've seen your posts here and appreciate the effort you are putting into accuracy.

[quote="dick"][quote="SovereignHobbies"]

I have a memorandum stating they were the same shade, but .....[/quote]

James, not sure what memorandum you are referring to but the relevant sentence in the relevant AFO does not include the word "shade" reading "...are in fact the same as..."

Also "shade" had a very specific meaning in WW2 RN usage - it meant the specific paint, G10, B55 or whatever.[/quote]

Hi Richard. I might be mis-remembering (I have a lot on my mind just now) but I [i]thought[/i] we had a slightly vaguer worded one than the one Michael attached below. I'm away from my references at the moment and to be honest I wish I hadn't responded to this thread at all now, but it bothers me when suggestions are made (not by yourself, I hasten to add - you have been nothing but helpful!) that I don't care about what we're making. Were that the case I'd still be manufacturing the old grey B5 - and no having it on sale has cost me customers.
I hope we can reach a consensus (and by that I mean a set of measured colour values we can agree up) in the next couple of months as discussed outwith here :)


[quote="508medway"]I think some of us believe wording such as the attached means they are the same colour. Also the formula for 507A & G10 are the same as is G45 & 507C.[/quote]

Hi Michael, I forgot about that document. My apologies! I do have a copy on my hard drive at home but there are so many of these snippets going around that this one slipped my mind.

[quote="Tracy White"]I'm not a RN paint expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I can absolutely confirm that it takes time to do proper research and to make sure you are not introducing MORE incorrect information into the human knowledge base. It's easier with this type of knowledge to know what's wrong than to know what's right.[/quote]

This is it in a nutshell Tracy. I am convinced that evidence doesn't stack up in a number of cases, but am not yet ready to state what our position is on all of these colours. We (Richard, Michael, Sean, Lyndsay and myself) have a pretty good idea what B5 looks like. It was the first one that rang some alarm bells and the first one I personally focussed on. Know what it should look like isn't the same as being able to make new paint though - but I know where I can get an original (admittedly aged) sample that definitely was B5 to begin with (and that really is the nub of the issue here - I/we suspect some collected but perhaps un-labelled samples of colours were assigned to colour designations known to exist some decades ago but may have been misidentified) to measure and go from there.

I've also accepted that Colourcoats' 507C had drifted a little. I don't know when - we acquired no stock of this colour from WEM, nor did we get any references so at the time I had no frame of reference. It's also an isolated problem. I haven't yet seen an original 507C sample but Richard has, tells me it compares well with Snyder & Short (which I've bought in the time between buying Colourcoats and summer when we started digging in to this). I trust Richard so our latest batch in manufacture now is rematched to S&S.

What it boils down to is being a business. I expect no sympathy, understanding nor brand loyalty from customers if I diverge from Snyder & Short who are widely respected and still end up with colours that people find questionable, so I need to be comfortable I'm right and avoid making knee-jerk decisions :)

I'm not a RN paint expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I can absolutely confirm that it takes time to do proper research and to make sure you are not introducing MORE incorrect information into the human knowledge base. It's easier with this type of knowledge to know what's wrong than to know what's right.

I think some of us believe wording such as the attached means they are the same colour. Also the formula for 507A & G10 are the same as is G45 & 507C.

[quote="SovereignHobbies"]

I have a memorandum stating they were the same shade, but .....[/quote]

James, not sure what memorandum you are referring to but the relevant sentence in the relevant AFO does not include the word "shade" reading "...are in fact the same as..."

Also "shade" had a very specific meaning in WW2 RN usage - it meant the specific paint, G10, B55 or whatever.

[quote="kruker"][quote="SovereignHobbies"]...
[/quote]
So the conclusion is that you admit that your G45 might in fact be wrong and it is better to use 507c instead?[/quote]


[quote="JCRAY"]I don't think he is saying that. I think he said that they are continuing their research. That is enough for now. I bought the WEM G 45 but I didn't use it! I used the WEM 507 C I'm just an old guy who likes to make RN ships, no expert. Just an opinion.[/quote]

As JCRAY interprets - I don't know yet. I have a document which states that 507C are zinc white, lead white and blue-black paste, and I have another document which states that 507C and G45 are the same [i]shade[/i], and I have Snyder & Short's chips which show them differently.

Part of the danger here is that people used and still use terminology interchangeably when they are ignorant. Colour scientists might use different terms to mean specific things. The word shade might have been used to mean reflectance, or lightness/darkness. If someone says "a shade darker" we all assume they mean a darker variant of the same hue, hue being the actual colour. If someone is talking about similar hue greys they might use the word "shade" in this case to state that a light yellowish grey was the same shade as a light bluish grey. Or, it could be that the word "shade" was used to mean that 507C and G45 were exactly similar in appearance as was the case with Ministry of Aircraft Production Dark Green and BS381-241 Dark Green post war, which had different formulations but looked exactly the same. The word "shade" [i]should[/i] mean a mixture of a specific hue with black, but most people don't know that and use the word however the define it personally. I have a memorandum stating they were the same shade, but it didn't come with a CV for the person who wrote it. It would be a dangerous assumption to declare "case closed" on the strength of one sentence written by a source of unknown qualification.

I haven't yet gathered sufficient evidence in all of these colours. I am aware there are anomalies. John Snyder and Randy Short didn't just make their colours up, so they have/had sound reason to believe they have a good representation of G45. It would take a genuine fool to dismiss their work on the grounds of a potentially ambiguous memorandum stating that G45 was the same "shade" as 507C. As such, all the memorandum mentioned above has done is cast doubt over G45 and prompted much more research into as many sources as possible to try to determine for sure what it looked like. In order to dismiss S&S chips, I need a package of evidence more robust - to be honest so robust that when John and Randy get copies and samples from me they say "yes, we agree with you and will update our chips".

I am an engineer by background, and expect certain words to mean certain things. If for example, I hear that something has "snapped off" I know I'm probably not hearing the words of anyone who understands fracture mechanics and doesn't understand the difference between a bending fracture and a tensile fracture - all they know is that something has broken off.

There is great value in these old documents members of this forum are sharing with me in the background (and have been for many months now) but I'm not about to endorse 507C in lieu of G45 yet. Suspecting that Snyder and Short G45 is too yellow does not mean that 507C is any more correct. All I know right at this moment in time is that G45 has 45% reflectance (so a very light shade - of some hue) and in all probability has very low saturation of the hue - so greyish.

I don't think he is saying that. I think he said that they are continuing their research. That is enough for now. I bought the WEM G 45 but I didn't use it! I used the WEM 507 C I'm just an old guy who likes to make RN ships, no expert. Just an opinion.

[quote="SovereignHobbies"]...
[/quote]
So the conclusion is that you admit that your G45 might in fact be wrong and it is better to use 507c instead?

[quote="JCRAY"]I would think about the same. Perhaps that color is what is referred to as pale gray.....
Wish Sovereign would take the time to examine the record. I know they are stuck with a lot of WEM inventory. Nobody is perfect but I feel this issue warrants a closer look.[/quote]

Trust me, we are taking this seriously.

Knowing there is an anomaly is easy. Proving the correct colour requires much examination of lots of documentation on top of running the business itself. Lastly there's the problem of the existence and ubiquity of the Snyder & Short chips themselves which are in turn based upon references deeply ingrained in many peoples' minds about what they expect a colour to look like. The documented evidence is not readily available nor interesting to most modellers and not something we can reproduce and publish ourselves - it belongs to various national archives and so on.

I hope to have most of these RN ones corrected by spring time 2017, but the burden of proof on these colours is on me. I can only update something if I can have confidence in a colour sample reference more solid than what the existing colours are based upon. We've made many samples of 507 patterns using the Rate Book formulae and pretty much the only thing we've proven is that we don't know what Blue Black Paste looked like or what its staining power was - and as such we can generate large variances in our home-made samples with minor tweaks in ultramarine blue and black content.

What's perhaps not apparent to the observer is whilst that the Rate Book formulae would be easy to follow as some guy on a ship retrieving pre-made cans of paste ingredients and simply emptying the contents into a bucket, in order to reproduce these we need to identify and track down copies of second and third level references - such as (in the case of Pattern 507s) a 1929 copy of a long defunct British Standard covering oil pastes. This 12 page booklet alone costs us £150+ postage for a black & white copy just to find out what one of the key ingredients to RN greys is supposed to consist of. We can then try making samples again, but it all takes time and that's a commodity I'm not overly endowed with these days ...

If this all sounds a bit defensive, I apologise. I reiterate though that I do take this very seriously but there's a great deal more to it that just running a still from a video above through MS Paint's colour pipper thing and matching paint to that. We're spending a lot of money on a trip to the British National Archives in London soon to view some old paint samples they have, but even then we have to expect those to have aged to some degree. What Snyder & Short have tried to do with their chips is reverse the aging they rightly expected their samples to have. I acknowledge there may still be anomalies there, but until I get something concrete, their methods are better than just guessing at colours and telling our customers they are correct.

Thanks for reading - that was longer than I had planned to post!

I'm sorry I thought I was talking MS 4a. So stupid of me!
Pardon Moi.

Nearly no scheme (assuming Raven is 100% :) ) uses MS4 and AP507C so I always though they had to be very very close.

I would think about the same. Perhaps that color is what is referred to as pale gray.....
Wish Sovereign would take the time to examine the record. I know they are stuck with a lot of WEM inventory. Nobody is perfect but I feel this issue warrants a closer look.

[quote="508medway"]There are problems with the ipmms colours as Admiralty records show that G45 & 507C are one and the same colour[/quote]

How close are G45 and 507C to MS4?

The colorcoat G 45 needs to be revised. It obviously was based on a yellowed paint card. The new owners need to examine the evidence. Snyder & Short are in error with this color. As has been stated G 45 looks the same as 507 C. Does anyone want several tins of the WEM G 45 FREE ? Just pay postage?

There are problems with the ipmms colours as Admiralty records show that G45 & 507C are one and the same colour as were 507B, 507A and G10. The only difference being the level of gloss.

507B was actually the Home Fleet colour during most of the inter war period, 507A being introduced in Jan 1939 as a less glossy version of 507B.

The original 507A in existence when WW1 commenced was dropped in WW1 and was a pure grey. 507A, B and C all used a blue black paste by the start of WW2. 507B/A/G10 used a Pattern known as Home Fleet blue black paste.

Thank you for quick reply. So I guess the sources I refered to might be wrong. I've also found this: http://www.ipmsswamp.com/files/VallejoWWIINavalColorEquivalents.pdf and the author suggests Vallejo 987 for G45 as well.
So is there a good Vallejo substitute for that color?

The published formula for G45 used just white lead oil paste, zinc oxide white and blue black paste. I can't see how you can get anything but a slight blue grey from that. Beige etc would surely require another colour to be added.

I've got an issue with actual G45 color.

Is seems to differ from greyish to beige in different sources. Ex. "Rodney and Nelson" book by Les and Robert Brown has a 1945 Nelson color scheme included and the G45 there is closest to Vallejo 987 Medium Grey or Humbrol 121. Also this source http://www.banksofthesusquehanna.com/Color_Charts/RN_ship_camo.htm gives us the G45 closer to beige than grey I think.

On the other hand the Sovereign Colorcoats G45 is in fact grey. Hataka G45 looks grey as well.

The question is which one should I use for the actual Nelson 1945 color scheme? Please advise! Are there any color photos of actual Nelson itself to determine which color would be better?

The G45 should look like this:
[img]http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0730/0927/products/RN14_804ed388-1574-4121-b5f1-c95bb9b37cba_large.jpg?v=1439029364[/img]

On the subject, B20:
[img]http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0730/0927/products/RN16_e079facb-a985-482b-b984-b57512e00b71_large.jpg?v=1439029495[/img]