Polyscale paint "Scale Black"

"Saw a bottle of Polyscale "Scale Black" paint today at the hobby shop. It's grayish black with I guess a real gentle touch of brown. Decided it would be useful for weathering undersides of RR cars and bought it, but I got to wondering: Does anyone know what the original intent of this color is?"

It's not part of their railroad line. It's a military color.

It's a german WWII era luftwaffe color so it's original intent is painting Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs.

" snipped-for-privacy@bigfoot.com" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

Yup. The paint bottle is labeled, in part, "rlm 66" but I had no idea what that meant. But Polyscale calls it "Scale Black" and the Wiki for RLM66 is "RLM - 66, SCHWARZGRAU ( black-grey )" which would have been a lot more descriptive.

Thanks Norm

The idea is that colors "scale out". When you view something in 1/87th scale or therabouts the colors scale out to how you see things in real life

87 times the distance from you that you are seeing the model. It accounts for atmospheric haze and limitations of human eyesight. The problem is that in order to make the effect work, every color has to be scaled. I like to use scale black for vehicle tires or steam engines that have been in service for more than a few days. It also photographs better than straight black. Take a close look a NS locomotive or a working steam engine sometime and observe all the different shades of black, even on a resently painted unit.

Claude Allen

I had a glimmer of a suspicion that it was something like that but I was thinking that a color like that would be scale-dependent. Someone else mentioned that it's part of the Armor line of colors so it's probably formulated for 1/35 scale or thereabouts.

I like it for the underside of RR cars because the dirt, grease, etc that accumulates there certainly isn't going to be pure black.

Thanks for the info.

Norm

Norm Dresner wrote:

Lighting effects color very strongly. We usually observe real railroads by daylight, and our memories of color come by what things looked like in daylight. Sunlight is whiter and brighter than any sort of artificial light. We view our models under incandescent or fluorescent light which is a lot dimmer than daylight and different color than daylight. The "dimmer" part makes real black a problem color for models. It is so dark that the eye has trouble seeing details. I "scale" the darker colors with a touch of white to lighten them so they well be easier to see. I use a dark gray for steamers rather than a true engine black. The darker blues and greens often benefit from getting a shade or two lighter. Fluorescent light is tricky. The lamps emit a "line spectrum" lots of light at blue, green, a good deal less at red, and virtually nothing in between those three colors. We see the lamps as "white" because they stimulate the three color receptors in our eyes more or less evenly. However, colored paint is different. It colors the object by selective reflection, some colors are reflected and others are absorbed by the paint. If the color the paint is trying to reflect just isn't present in the fluorescent light then the painted object looks darker than it would by daylight. Red and brown suffer most under fluorescent light. Incandescent light is much redder than sunlight. Color photographs taken under incandescent light look yellow unless the film was "balanced" for incandescent light rather than daylight. If the Kodaks and the Fujis of the world can fiddle with the color balance of film to make it look right under incandescent lamps, then surely we model railroaders can do the same with our paints?

David Starr

ug! tell me about it. I mixed up some reddish grey paint in my bathroom (incandescent light). Looked exactly like the photograph I was comparing it to. Painted a hopper with the paint. Decaled the car and lo and behold... In the train room (flourescent) the car looked purple! eeks!! Luckily a little weathering fixed the problem. sigh, I should have known better. Jb

Did they mention what scale it is intended to be?

Greg.P.

Absolutely not. But "Armor" models are typically 1:35 IIRC and it's supposed to be part of their "Armor Series" of paints.

Norm

It was a tongue in cheek question, but ...

- Imagine an 8'x4' (2440x1220mm) sheet of ply leaning up against the wall of your house.

- Paint it black - pure, absolute black

- Try representing this in a variety of scales. You will need a slightly different mix of black with a touch of white to get the same overall effect in each scale.

- imagine the sun moves through a day's traverse. The precise shade of the black will vary with the light angle and the reflection from the ground and surrounding features, just like water varies in colour depending on it's surroundings. Every scale of the prototype ply sheet will react/appear slightly differently.

- Now introduce some "detailing" to the flat sheet, wheels under footplate, tank track suspension etc. Every part gets different proportions of direct and reflected light and this varies with scale. Basically, you can't do it for every scale and light situation. The first rule I learned as an artist was, 'black, as it comes from the tube never occurs in nature, so you shouldn't use it on canvas'.

Regards, Greg.P.

Well, in that case I'm confused. If it's meant to be RLM66, it shouldn't be in their armour series, surely. From what I remember from my IPMS scale modelling days, WW2 German armour colours were taken from the RAL

840R standard.

RLM numbers designated colours for aircraft use. RLM stands for something like "Reichsluftfährtministerium"(sp?) - the Air Ministry of the Reich.