All photography by Jaime DuPont
" I cant get good Gloss Gull Grey anymore!!" - Joseph Belding, VP of True North Precision Paints, and the reason we got this whole thing started.
That's where we started, after a year of experimentation, and a few more years of color testing, research, and learning how to produce our paints; we have a Modeler's oil enamel that we will put against any other.
We decided to expand on a few paints we needed at the time and try out some more in the FS# series. Each step brought new challenges, each formulation brought us closer to understanding the science behind the oil enamels. We set some simple goals for these paints that we started to hope would grace the shelves of our friends and colleagues.
The paint has to hand brush with ease with exceptional leveling characteristics
Every color has to match within reason to what was painted onto the actual vehicles at the corresponding times. Where possible, the actual tint types and mixture formulas are obtained and utilized. For example we have a great yellow zinc chromate. Green zinc chromate was made by adding black to the yellow zinc chromate, so guess how we made ours....
The paint should handle being cut with lacquer thinner for those extremely fine jobs.
The paint needs to thin well into wash and filter consistencies.
The paint has to work with any airbrush under any circumstances, high pressure, low pressure, full coverage to hair line detail work.
The paint has to bond to the plastic of our models. If the paint cannot stand up to masking tape the formula is scrapped.
The paint has to be a good value without sacrificing any of the quality. We feel a modeler should feel free to experiment with there own mixes without the pain of possibly throwing out a 7 or 8 dollar bottle of paint.
Paint separation is a common thing with oil enamels, the paint does need to remix easily, or the formula is scrapped.