Thanks for your responses, Gentlemen. Much appreciated.
I was curious what an impartial, uninvested eye saw when looking at these images.
We seem to be living in a world today that has become very ‘Flat Biased’ when it comes to paint finishes. They can hide a lot of mistakes and sloppy workmanship, unlike their glossy cousins, and I cannot, for the life of me recall when, if ever before, I have ever purchased a glossy paint, or even had one matched.
The flat Olive Green I had matched a year ago for the three wood equipment boxes for the 52-Set was spot on perfect and I have never had issues before with colour matched paints from our local RONA Store. This Gloss Navy Grey has been a whole different ball game.
For the boxes, the new paint was going to be needed on the replacement interior partition, where if it was off by any amount, it would be hidden. When it came time to tidy up the exteriors of the three boxes, they would all be entirely repainted and new stencils applied, so they would all match. Again, no big deal if the colour match was off a bit.
This Gloss, Navy Grey on the other hand is primarily a touch up on the Sender front panel and will be used for an entire redo of the Supply Unit front panel when the time comes. If it was off a little bit with the Supply Unit, it would be standing on its own and any variation would be sitting away from the other three components of the main 52-Set, so not a real problem. As a Sender touch up paint, my mind has steadily blown this up into a very big problem. The last thing I want is a mismatch significant enough the repair work looks like the first lesson at a One Eyed Clown Painting Class.
When the paint was first matched, I thought it was a very good match at the store, factoring in wet paint always has a slightly different tone to it than when it dries. To be absolutely certain before I started the touch up work, I prepared the small sample plate I posted about last. When I put the three pieces together to test out the match, what I found was that the initial glance at the three pieces together looked spot on perfect regarding the actual colours, the sample plate was very hard to spot. When my eyes did finally find and focus on it, a very odd thing started to happen. As I stared at it, it became much more noticeable and actually took on a very distinctive green grey colouration. If I blinked, or glanced away and back again for a moment, the sample disappeared and then re-emerged and quickly took on the green grey appearance once more. I began to strongly suspect my mind was so worried about the possibility of a serious mismatch; it was actually creating one to satisfy the pre-existing condition I had created in my head.
So that is why I turned it over to the MLU experts for their opinion. Chris’ reaction was identical to my initial one, as was my lovely wife’s after I dragged her into the survey as well. Bruce identified a key issue with the paint as well.
I am now quite comfortable in regards to the actual colour; this is a very good match to the original Navy Grey. It most definitely, however, is different from the original Navy Grey regarding the gloss. This modern paint base has a lot more gloss to it than the original 75 year old paint does when I compare the two in daylight or indoors. The increased gloss reflects more light than the original paint and that has the effect of lightening or darkening the colour tone of the paint, more than the original. It is possible, when moving the two pieces around, side by side in the light, to easily reach a sweet spot in the reflections where the colour tones of the two paints suddenly match. So.
What I think I am going to do is let the paint sample continue to cure for a while longer and then mask off half of it. I will then polish the other half and compare the two sections. I am thinking the polishing process with the same polish I used to clean the panel with, should cut back the gloss enough to solve the problem. I have lots of other things to deal with for the Project in the meantime.
So thanks again for the feedback, as it was very helpful.
David
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