The difference in shades of green between K & C tanks and Figarti tanks. (1 Viewer)

[PlaneGuy]

Hi all.
There is a significant difference between the shades of green on K & C tanks and Figarti tanks. I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on which shade of green is more accurate, K & C or Figarti ?

 

[Phantom Warrior]

Hi all.
There is a significant difference between the shades of green on K & C tanks and Figarti tanks. I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on which shade of green is more accurate, K & C or Figarti ?

There was such a wide variation in green of the Russian tanks even fresh from the factory, there really is no correct colour. The Figarti green is darker and seems to have that grimy, oily tank look while the K&C green is cleaner and lighter in colour. There is no problem in using both companies tanks in the same scenario. Even the two Figarti tanks aren't the exact same colour.

Terry

 

[lancer]

Heck, I think I remember reading that some Russian tanks rolled right off the assembly lines and went straight to the front without even being painted at all. I rather imagine the correct shade of green for a Russian tank was what a factory had on hand on any given day. -- Al

 

[Sentaapua]

Heck, I think I remember reading that some Russian tanks rolled right off the assembly lines and went straight to the front without even being painted at all. I rather imagine the correct shade of green for a Russian tank was what a factory had on hand on any given day. -- Al

You`re right on spot, that`s exactly what I read too, Al. Olive green was the "official" color but tank factories were on a far from perfect logistical supply so the assembly lines just used whatever green was on hand. If no green was available, it would be shipped out to the front lines with no paint at all... Tanks that had a camo pattern painted were exclusively the tank`s crew job, using their own imagination. In short, any olive or drab or dark green goes...so this "green diversity" IMHO really add realism to a dio!

 

[Blowtorch]

Hi all.
There is a significant difference between the shades of green on K & C tanks and Figarti tanks. I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on which shade of green is more accurate, K & C or Figarti ?

AKAN 4BO is being marketed as the 'real thing'....& I have yet to see anyone disprove them or even disagree with them. Figarti is closer, but not identical.

The AKAN 4BO is a medium dark olive green literally on the border with the olive drab hue range. This means it has a browner look than a pure olive green. Up until the release of the AKAN paint, most modelers were going deeper into the olive green color range. The AKAN sample surprised a lot of people...but also explained some things such as why old time authors had more brown in their color plates of WW2 USSR tanks.

 

[Rob]

Both are very nicely done and both look just fine to me, I prefer the lighter K&C shade myself but the Figarti oily look works well too.

 

[Blowtorch]

Hi all.
There is a significant difference between the shades of green on K & C tanks and Figarti tanks. I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on which shade of green is more accurate, K & C or Figarti ?

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were specifically referring to Russian tanks. Looking at Rob's post, you could mean American & Brit colors as well.

For a general answer, I would suggest keeping an open mind. Color has three dimensions which must be tackled, and it is difficult for our simple two dimensional minds to get a grasp of that.

Specifically, WW2 US Olive Drab was a color that was a greyish olive green, some more grey than others, and had a range of shades (lightness). It was issued in several color standards during the war, all of them different, some more different than others. For a model, the K&C White Scout car captures the lighter color variant nicely. The Chaffee is a bit darker & also within the target range for a model. I don't have other US pieces, so I can't comment further.

The British had their own WW2 OD which they were known to use, which is more like the US standard camo color Forest Green. I believe this is what Figarti was going for (in a weathered variety) with their Firefly, not perfect, not bad.

When I first started research military colors, I thought how simple it would be if we could just find the correct color, and everyone match it for their models in the name of accuracy. But then as I got into the nitty gritty, that is the industrial side of matching colors in the pre computer era, I came to think we are in a much better situation with the error, because that is what was really happening.

A color standard was issued by a government agency, and the paint manufacturers tried to match it with the three variables, hue, value & chroma, and got something that kind of resembled the target, but not exactly. In models, you have to compensate for scale and weather, which adds further variety.

For a visual reference, if you held a gun to my head I would recommend the US FS595b/c color standards 33070 as a representative target for US WW2 OD, and 34079 for Brit OD.

 

[uksubs]

For me k&c Mickey mouse colour look spot on but Cromwell and the firefly green look to light for late ETO British armour but that just my opinion:smile2:

 

[Mitch]

I think if your painting AFV's at least, you have to take into account what they would look like after a short time in the field. Dust, grime, scrapes, rain even bleaching from the sun would change the appearance of colour not only from tank to tank painted in the same colour but also different parts of the same tank.

Seen a few Figarti pieces and not really keen on the darker hues for the allied AFV's prefer the lighter colours myself but, when painting allied AFV's I use my own colourway that I think addresses allied armour. its like the german grey question darker or lighter its never going to be resolved as each have their own taste and, each can bring some paper document which offers something different.

Mix and match is fine if you think in the way explained at the start of the post
Mitch

 

[fmethorst]

AKAN 4BO is being marketed as the 'real thing'....& I have yet to see anyone disprove them or even disagree with them. Figarti is closer, but not identical.

The AKAN 4BO is a medium dark olive green literally on the border with the olive drab hue range. This means it has a browner look than a pure olive green. Up until the release of the AKAN paint, most modelers were going deeper into the olive green color range. The AKAN sample surprised a lot of people...but also explained some things such as why old time authors had more brown in their color plates of WW2 USSR tanks.

The book ""KV Technical History & Variants" by Neil Stokes has this to say

http://www.4bogreen.com/colors

Link to Federal Standard 595 Color Server

http://www.colorserver.net/

 

[uksubs]

Thank for the link Frank

 

[Blowtorch]

The book ""KV Technical History & Variants" by Neil Stokes has this to say

The only two modeling authors I have any respect for are Dana Bell & Mike Starmer. I have sent Mr. Stokes a professional analysis of his essay, and never received a response.

Pretty much most authors are just trying to sell a book & need to fill it up with something-ok, that's the way the economy works. Being that 99.99% + of the general population has zero expertise in color measurement & communication, who is going to ask questions?

As soon as someone mentions a pigment recipe, that is like the flare gun going off over the sinking Titanic imo. When RGB gets in the discussion, that is the Titanic breaking in two & heading for the ocean floor at 300mph

Forgot to mention...Stokes wrote that before Akan colors came to be

 

[fmethorst]

The only two modeling authors I have any respect for are Dana Bell & Mike Starmer. I have sent Mr. Stokes a professional analysis of his essay, and never received a response.

Pretty much most authors are just trying to sell a book & need to fill it up with something-ok, that's the way the economy works. Being that 99.99% + of the general population has zero expertise in color measurement & communication, who is going to ask questions?

As soon as someone mentions a pigment recipe, that is like the flare gun going off over the sinking Titanic imo. When RGB gets in the discussion, that is the Titanic breaking in two & heading for the ocean floor at 300mph

Forgot to mention...Stokes wrote that before Akan colors came to be

The color schemes section of the KV1 book takes up 3 of 560 total pages. I hardly think the author needed additional padding to bulk up the book. I think it's great that AKAN claims they have the "correct" color but they are selling paint so I would expect nothing less.

Based on the crudeness of Soviet industry I'm more likely to believe that there was a level of variation than 1 absolute correct color.

 

[Blowtorch]

I think you are misunderstanding me Frank, I'm not saying that AKAN is the absolute correct color, far from it. As you point out there are physical limitations to wartime color matching which I totally agree with. All I am saying is that we have one data point if AKAN matched the color chip correctly. But one data point doesn't give us an indication of the color range over the entire WW2 period.

What I am saying about Mr. Stokes essay is that it is meaningless. And he does use it to sell his book. If you go on the various modelling forums he frequents, he often uses those 3 pages you mention to bait people into buying his book. Whenever someone brings up the topic of 4BO, soon Mr. Stokes will show up saying 'come buy my book & see what I have to say' or something like that.



Here's part of the technical reason why this is so difficult.

Agency X issues a color standard (S1) for tanks let's say. Then comes a war out of the blue. Agency X doesn't have anymore color standards...so they have to make new ones (S2). Because exact color matching is near impossible, the second generation standard S2 is somewhat different from S1. And the factories don't use S1 & S2 on the production floor. They make their own standards based off of the Agency standards, because there are never enough Agency editions to go around. Those proprietary standards are what the paint color is actually derived from. So the paint that goes on a tank is at least two color driftings away from the intended Agency standard (S1 to S1' to paint for tank). And in America, with all the resources we had & unscathed factories, sometimes the Agencies themselves borrowed the factory proprietary standards to distribute to other factories, which themselves would make up their own color control panels from those already erroneous primary factory cards. So you have a color bullseye which keeps on moving in a three dimensional space, a bullseye which itself can never be hit exactly, and the color starts to drift all over the place.

 

[fmethorst]

Fair enough, it's unfortunate if he is trying to get people to buy his book based on a tiny section that is clearly under researched (and is available on the the accompanying website I might add). rather than what the book is really about variations of the KV1.

I agree regarding the wartime variations. Add onto this aging, weathering, fading and I think there is a fair bit of tolerance that is acceptable in models of WWII vehicles.

I think you are misunderstanding me Frank, I'm not saying that AKAN is the absolute correct color, far from it. As you point out there are physical limitations to wartime color matching which I totally agree with. All I am saying is that we have one data point if AKAN matched the color chip correctly. But one data point doesn't give us an indication of the color range over the entire WW2 period.

What I am saying about Mr. Stokes essay is that it is meaningless. And he does use it to sell his book. If you go on the various modelling forums he frequents, he often uses those 3 pages you mention to bait people into buying his book. Whenever someone brings up the topic of 4BO, soon Mr. Stokes will show up saying 'come buy my book & see what I have to say' or something like that.



Here's part of the technical reason why this is so difficult.

Agency X issues a color standard (S1) for tanks let's say. Then comes a war out of the blue. Agency X doesn't have anymore color standards...so they have to make new ones (S2). Because exact color matching is near impossible, the second generation standard S2 is somewhat different from S1. And the factories don't use S1 & S2 on the production floor. They make their own standards based off of the Agency standards, because there are never enough Agency editions to go around. Those proprietary standards are what the paint color is actually derived from. So the paint that goes on a tank is at least two color driftings away from the intended Agency standard (S1 to S1' to paint for tank). And in America, with all the resources we had & unscathed factories, sometimes the Agencies themselves borrowed the factory proprietary standards to distribute to other factories, which themselves would make up their own color control panels from those already erroneous primary factory cards. So you have a color bullseye which keeps on moving in a three dimensional space, a bullseye which itself can never be hit exactly, and the color starts to drift all over the place.

 

[Blowtorch]

Yeah, all I'm saying is that the Akan paint is our best starting point, but even better might me the data cards on this page.
http://akan.ru/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=29:4bo&catid=1:akan&Itemid=4

specifically, if anyone can read Russian & tell me the XYZxy for 4BO & under what settings they were measured, that would be a goldmine of information

 

[Phantom Warrior]

The article is too technical for me to really understand it - but it basically seems to say there was a wide range of colour but he equates 4BO on a real tank to the modeller's colour AKAN 320.

4BO used only 3 pigments; chromium oxide green, ocher and Zhuravskaya orange and I think he is saying that the orange is no longer available to properly recreate the original paint. The "O" was for Linseed oil.

He appears to be saying that from the colour cards, 4BO was 73 122 but the range was 73 020 to 83 084.


Terry

 

[Phantom Warrior]

The article is too technical for me to really understand it - but it basically seems to say there was a wide range of colour but he equates 4BO on a real tank to the modeller's colour AKAN 320.

4BO used only 3 pigments; chromium oxide green, ocher and Zhuravskaya orange and I think he is saying that the orange is no longer available to properly recreate the original paint. The "O" was for Linseed oil.

He appears to be saying that from the colour cards, 4BO was 73 122 but the range was 73 020 to 83 084.


Terry

Another article says RKKA paint mixing instructions from 1941 specify that Protective Green 4BO was a mixture of 40-60% yellow ochre, 15-20% zinc chromate, 10% ultramarine and 10-20% white. That seems like a very different composition.

Terry