Floquil Marine Colors

[Capt. Kelso]

Saw a reference to Floquil Marine Color paints in one of the posts recently. Moving stuff around on my workbench and found an old color chart. Never could find a use for Verdigris!

[Bob Cleek]

5 hours ago, Capt. Kelso said:

Never could find a use for Verdigris!

I did! I used it for weathered bronze patina. I used it as a base color and then did a bit of "weathering" on it. I had a model with copper cable standing rigging (very "yachty" in the days before stainless steel.) I used it on the standing rigging.  I've also used it on deck fittings and scoop ventilators. Floquil's verdigris was, to my taste, at least, a bit too light. I'd tone it down with a thin brown wash. I also used it to good effect when air brushing hull bottoms. There will always be some verdigris highlights on copper bottoms and, to a lesser extent, on copper-containing antifouling painted bottoms, right along the waterline where the air gets to the copper and it oxidizes it.

 

MicroScale has one of the best Floquil equivalent color charts online. It shows all the Floquil and PollyScale  (Testor's former high-quality line of acrylic miniature paint) colors matched to the equivalent colors of most of the major model paint manufacturers today.

 

Parenthetically, I came across an interesting booklet online the other day: The Model Railroad Hobbyist's  Guide to Acrylic Painting in a Post-Floquil World, published by Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine in 2016. The PDF of this booklet can be found at 58. MRH14-12-Dec2014 (testors.com)  It contains a lot of good information about acrylic modeling paints and contains a very good equivalent color chart from Floquil/PolyScale paints to other brands. It addresses formulae for mixing thinners and techniques for application. In some ways, it is a modern acrylic-themed version of the old Floquil Painting Miniatures booklet first printed in 1961 and available at: Floquil Painting Miniatures (paulbudzik.com), provided by Paul Budzig on his really valuable website: Fine Scale Modeling by Paul Budzik (His "Tools and Techinques" and "Videos" sections on the site are real treasures well.) The latter booklet has a lot of very good instructional information on miniature painting which, despite common perceptions perhaps fostered by the paint manufacturers, isn't as easy to do well as it looks. I expect the information in these two booklets would be of interest to most modelers.

 

Edited September 22, 2023 by Bob Cleek

[kurtvd19]

I have both booklets Bob listed and they are helpful.

[bushman32]

How I wish we still had Floquil Marine Colors.

[Canute]

There are vendors selling Floquil paint. Google is your assistant for them. Although I suspect the Marine colors are even more scarce than the railroad colors.

 

You could also look at Tru Color Paint, an acetone based paint. It has some marine colors at: https://trucolorpaint.com/military-ships/  They're mostly for airbrush, but they do make brushable formulations.

[kurtvd19]

The Badger Modelflex Marine Colors line of paints was matched to Floquil Marine Paints and Snyder & Short's color chips.  These are carried by Ages of Sail - one of MSW's Sponsors as well as another of our sponsors USA Airbrush Supplies.  You can find both in the list of sponsors on the right side of the home page.

[Canute]

Very good to know about the color matching, Kurt. Thanks.