Aftika Korp color

[David Da Costa]

Hi all,

I ordered my RAL8000 paint for the PIII from http://www.kommiss.com in Germany and yesterday I sprayed a test piece to see how it went on.

The color is a lot more brown (rather than yellow) than I thought compared to how the Bovington PIII looks.

I have attached a picture of the sample (I realize that exactly how the color is going to appear is variable depending on the monitor you are viewing it on).

Any thoughts?

David

[Adrian Harris]

Colour is a horribly subjective thing, though your supplier does seem to be saying their colours are authentic.

To me, that looks more like the colour of the Bovington Panzer IIIN:



than their Panzer IIIL, which is the same sandy colour as the Tiger, though without the camouflage stripes:



Both these pictures were taken with the same camera and flash, but of course the overall lighting colour temperature may be different as the tanks are in different parts of the museum.

There used to be an Afrika Korps website which gave examples of the colours but it appears to have been hijacked

Adrian.

[David Da Costa]

Hi Adrian,

thanks for that! I agree it looks very close the the Panzer N. I am sure that both are probably supposed to be Ral8000 though

Regards

David

[Stephen White]

David

The Bovington Pz III Ausf L paint is intended to be RAL 8000. The paint supplier was Cromadex in Southampton UK.

It's notoriously difficult to pin down German WWII colour. The Afrikakorps.org website had a good account of the development of AFV schemes but it does seem to have disappeared. The chart below comes from that website:



Although RAL 8000 is appropriate for early DAK vehicles, by the later stages, a scheme of RAL 8020 and 7027 would have been appropriate.

Here's a photo (the only one I've found) of a model in that scheme:



The Xtracrylix range of model pains are generally regarded as accurate.

Incidently, I've now tried a couple of times to order paint from Komiss.de and have very abrupt replies saying "out of stock" - no indication of availability.

Regards

Stephen

[David Da Costa]

Thanks for the great info Stephen.

The paint RAL8000 paint sample from the AfrikaKorps.org website certainly matches the paint I have.

I think I am happy now that the paint I got is accurate (as it is going to be).

It took me a long time to get the paint as he first tried to send spray cans (which I ordered) but they were not allowed to fly, so instead he resent pots of paint.

Regards

David

[colin fairweather]

hi lads

a lot of talk on the old forum about this hard to pinpoint the right shade of colour as their are no paints mixed for 1/6th scale

their was a sugestion about it that maybe if useing 1/1 scale paint on 1/6th kits that you could/should tone it down a bit

ie lighten it as a 1/1 tank is a lot bigger than 1/6th and it would be more spred out if know what i mean

it would be more consentrated on a 1/6th scale kit

colin

[David Da Costa]

Still "stressing" a bit about the RAL 8000 I have used being a bit dark.

Under bright light/ flash photography I think the color looks spot on, but otherwise I think it is a bit dark for 1/6 scale.

I think Colin is right about the 1/1 scale paint being a bit dark for 1/6

What I think I am going to do is when I am weathering the tank, I will airbrush a light coat of Tamiya dark yellow acrylic over the enamel RAL 8000 to lighten it up a bit, probably leaving the edges etc of the tank a bit darker to vary the tone and create some depth.

Any advice from more experienced painters is welcome.


David

[colin fairweather]

hi dave

i think that would be a good idea

weathering and detailing is not my strong point i still havent done any on the tiger if you go to this link dave at armorpax gives a very good idea of how to go about it

http://www.armorpax.com/Armorpax/Forum/ ... .php?t=190

regards

colin

[Brian Leach]

David,

Here is my 2cents worth:

When I was in the Marine Corps I did a couple models of the F-4 Phantoms we had in Beufort, SC. Initially I used the actual Gull Grey paint we painted teh aircraft with, but as some of the earlier writers noted, it looked too dark. I than repainted with a lighter shade I had mixed up and it looked "right". So, for what it is worth that is what I did.

BTW Nivce build, thanks for sharing,
and Good luck


As Roland says, it is the path traveled that gives us the fun!
Brian

[Tim Bowman]

Hi David

The sample you show looks like a dunkelgelb I am currently using on my projects. This will be the base coat only. Just as others have said above, I found on the Panther that mixing some white(very little) with the base color will help lighten the color slightly and also tone down the color. This gives it more of a scale look. I applied this over my base coat randomly dusting and adding streaks on side panels and patches on top surfaces very very subtly. This gave it a nice "out in the weather" look before any camo colors or dirt-type weathering was added.

Don't stress about the base coat you have on. It will turn out great!

The model Stephen shows looks awesome! Much better then the Ausf L "yellow-ish" coloring. IMHO but I'm not a DAK expert.

Just have fun.
Kind regards
Tim

[Jim Fowler]

David, I can't really add much more that what has been said. But, I still use the old standard......."Wehrmacht Heer Camouflage Colors, 1939-1945" by Tomas Chory.

This is actually where the color chart Stephen posted comes from - the actual color chips in the book are a few shades and hughes different from the online image (the problem with computer graphics).

Unfortunately, over the past years my site has been affected by my diabetes, having this book helps me greatly when wrestling with this issue and choosing proper color.

Best Wishes,


Jim.