Paint Conversion Charts

[Admiral Beez]

This was recommended to me by an expert builder https://www.modelshade.com/paint-conversion-chart/

 

Mods, if it’s already covered elsewhere please move or delete my post, thank you.

[Bob Cleek]

Thanks for posting this conversion chart program. It's one of the most extensive I've ever seen and a welcome addition to my "favorites" collection. I especially like the convenient feature of just clicking on the brand and then the color and getting the whole range of equivalents. It's more than just a "chart," it's a program. While the variation in computer screen color settings render these "online paint chips" less than perfect, they are an excellent start for those of us who mix our own colors, or run out of our "stash" of the old-time premixed "good stuff" in the middle of a build.

 

For those who may find it useful, here's an additional color conversion chart for the now out of production Floquil colors: Floquil Color Chart.pdf (microscale.com)

 

Here also is a link to a PDF copy of Floquil's instruction booklet on another website. It contains a lot of good painting tips for miniatures:  Floquil Painting Miniatures (paulbudzik.com)

[Roger Pellett]

Both of these should be Pinned by the forum gurus.  They look like great reference tools.

 

One color that I have not been able to find anywhere is red lead, not the actual stuff.  This is an old time industrial color widely used as a primer.  It appears to have been used for painting the bottom of Great Lakes Ships.

 

Any ideas?

[Bob Cleek]

15 minutes ago, Roger Pellett said:

One color that I have not been able to find anywhere is red lead, not the actual stuff.  This is an old time industrial color widely used as a primer.  It appears to have been used for painting the bottom of Great Lakes Ships.

Maybe I'm missing the color to which you refer. Red lead primer is used to prime iron and steel because the lead oxide bonds well to iron and steel. It's not an antifouling hull coating, however. Traditional antifouling coatings are generally the same a reddish brown color as some red lead paint because they contain a fair amount of cuprous oxide. There's a wide range of colors which one might describe as "red lead." 

 

Red lead oxide pigment has a color range from bright orange ("International Orange") through scarlet to brick red or brown depending on the composition of the lead oxide. That's the problem when it comes to matching it. Because red lead oxide was the cheapest paint pigment at one time, they painted everything with it where appearances didn't matter, from ship bottoms to boxcars to schoolhouses, to barns, and in every variation of the orange to brown range.  This is probably why none of the paint manufacturers market a specific "red lead" color. Artists call the bright orange colored version of red lead tetroxide "minium," which was what the Romans called it. You can find artists' oil paint called by that name: Minium (Red Lead) Oil Paint Minium 50Ml (artistsupplysource.com) You'll find many premixed shades of what you are looking for in the "railroad colors" section of model paint manufacturers' chip sheets. 

 

 

 

Minium-232908 - Minium (mineral) - Wikipedia

 

Or, you can buy lead tetroxide powder from Firefoxs' Home page--for fireworks making supplies, pyrotechnic chemicals, color smoke, composite propellant kits, electric igniter kits, Igniter Heads, Paper Caps & Plugs, 37/38mm insert materials, fireworks fuse.... (firefox-fx.com) and mix up a batch of the real stuff in your basement at home:

 

Makes one gallon:

 

20 lbs dry red lead tetroxide powder**

5 pts raw linseed oil*

1/2 pt turpentine

1/2 pt Japan drier*

 

*If using "boiled" linseed oil, the Japan drier should be omitted.

 

**If cost or weight is a consideration, cabosil or talc may be substituted for up to half the red lead tetroxide powder to maintain paint consistency.

 

Or for small modelmaking amounts, you could just take any clear matt finish coating and however much red lead tetroxide powder you need to color it to your taste. 

 

 

 

[mtaylor]

1 hour ago, Roger Pellett said:

Both of these should be Pinned by the forum gurus.  They look like great reference tools.

 

Excellent idea.  It's pinned.

[Roger Pellett]

Thanks, Mark

 

 Bob: Here on the Lakes, the colors of vessels’ hulls reflect the cargos that they are expected to carry; Red oxide, iron ore; Black, coal; and light grey, limestone or cement.  A few fleets sported fancy paint jobs; Shenango Furnace painted their hulls green and ships In the Inland Steel Fleet still have a red oxide hull with a white stripe.  Crews supposedly hate the paint job since they have to maintain it.

 

Since, draft can vary greatly depending on loaded condition  and since fouling is not a huge problem, the paint job does not mark a load waterline.  Instead the hull color is carried down to the strake of plating just above the bilge strake.  Below that, the hull is painted with whatever primer was used.  In days past this was an orange hued red lead.  Color photos from 50 or so years ago sometimes show this, and often show the red lead primer where lock walls, docks, etc. have rubbed off the paint.

 

When Ships fit out after winter layup, crews standing on the harbor ice with very long handled paint rollers touch up the paint.  These ships are usually drydocked every five years.  At that time the bottoms are sandblasted and repainted.

 

With current regulations preventing lead based paints, I would assume that bottoms are now painted with ordinary red iron oxide primer.

 

Roger

[Bob Cleek]

3 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

Here on the Lakes, the colors of vessels’ hulls reflect the cargos that they are expected to carry; Red oxide, iron ore; Black, coal; and light grey, limestone or cement.  A few fleets sported fancy paint jobs; Shenango Furnace painted their hulls green and ships In the Inland Steel Fleet still have a red oxide hull with a white stripe.  Crews supposedly hate the paint job since they have to maintain it.

 

Since, draft can vary greatly depending on loaded condition  and since fouling is not a huge problem, the paint job does not mark a load waterline.  Instead the hull color is carried down to the strake of plating just above the bilge strake.  Below that, the hull is painted with whatever primer was used.  In days past this was an orange hued red lead.  Color photos from 50 or so years ago sometimes show this, and often show the red lead primer where lock walls, docks, etc. have rubbed off the paint.

 

When Ships fit out after winter layup, crews standing on the harbor ice with very long handled paint rollers touch up the paint.  These ships are usually drydocked every five years.  At that time the bottoms are sandblasted and repainted.

I did not know that. Very interesting. It makes perfect sense that they'd not be too worried about antifouling paint there. I have not idea what the local regs are, but there are lots of rust-inhibiting coatings available now, so red lead isn't needed. (They can even spray molten zinc, which results in the equivalent of hot dipped galvanizing.) They come at a cost, though. In my neck of the woods, they stopped painting the Golden Gate Bridge with red lead paint years ago. They now use another coating of the same color.