Alfa Warbird Paint

[tashley]

A tip for anyone needing to touch up the paint on their Alfa warbird. Go to your favorite paint or hardware store with a color spectrum analizer and have the desired paint on the model shot with the machine. The operator should be able to give you either a print out or a handwritten sheet showing you the different colors and ratios of the paint you need to match.
Then go to Wallyworld and look in the craft section for Apple Barrel acrylic paints, some of them costs less than fifty cents a bottle. Mix your paint using the ratios provided by the analizer and either brush on or spray.
You'll be amazed at how close you can get the colors to match and it costs almost, but not quite, nothing.;)

[Bill G]

We get house paints matched with a similar process, using chips. 100% match! Amazing new technolgies. Ive tried hand mixing matches for the Alfa FW190. The lichtgrun (RLM lightgreen I believe) is about impossible to match. I wish the model paints carried more of these under fuse shades.
Bill

[Skogga]

The model paints today wouldn't match the real planes back then, either!

All Luftwaffe colors have been speculative since before the end of the war. With so much mix-and-match and unauthorized thinning by field crews due to lack of supply, it's a wonder we know what we know now.

However, it's also historically accurate to swap parts so we have a way to paint a part differently using another color. Claim the parts bird your new part came off of was blue underneath instead of green. Then you can paint the repaired section blue. This adds interest to the scheme as well; try repainting the light gray portions of your wing violet-brown for instance, you now have wings off an eastern front plane on your western front schlager.