The last couple of days have been spent experimenting with a couple of Natural Green luminous paints, to see how easy they are to work with in a hand painting situation.
The two paints I have found locally are both acrylic and made by the same company, DECOART, in the USA. I found them in the local Michal’s craft store. It was an interesting and informative exercise.
First, the basics for each paint. In the two accompanying photographs, the DS102 paint is on the left and the DS50 on the right. The daylight and luminous colours of these two paints are identical and match the natural green luminous paint found on original wartime 19-Sets and the green on the panels of the 52-Set equipment. DS102 is the thicker of the two paints by far. It comes with a pen head cap intended to extrude a thin bead of paint, to give a dimensional effect on whatever project one might be working on. But it can be applied by brush readily. The DS50 is a true paint. It must be well shaken before using and if whatever you are doing takes more than 15 to 20 minutes to apply paint to, you need to recap and re-shake, before continuing.
One thing that is absolutely essential when working with either paint is that you need to work with this paint under a UV, or Black Light, in the dark. It is the only way to see how well, or poorly, the phosphors are being distributed on the surface you are working on.
The other interesting thing for both paints. I started with the crisp white satin, white paint as the base for both paints. The very first coat of either luminous paint changes the crisp white to a soft cream colour. This phenomenon was exactly what I had seen with the tone of the surviving white paint on the Flick Indicator Flags on 19-Set and my 52-Set. There may very well be some normal discolouration of the wartime flat white paint over the years, but the bulk of the colour change would appear to be the addition of the luminous paint.
I started with the DS50 paint first. It is a challenge! As soon as you apply any pressure to the brush, or move it across the surface you are painting, the phosphors squeeze out of the way. You end up with the main surface area with next to no phosphors and a thin line of them around the perimeter. To a point, this was good news.
When I first removed the front panel from the Sender and saw the six Flick Indicator Flags, I got out my UV Light to see if there was any glow left on the flags. The only thing visible was a thin green line around the two side edges, and a slightly thicker one at the top. My experience with this paint now tells me that during the 202 Workshop rebuild in the 1960’s these flags were indeed repainted and whoever did it started at the lower; black edge – which was probably masked off – and moved the brush up to the top of the flags were the metal folds back along the top.
It took four coats of this paint to get enough infill in the centre of the test square for a green glow to be noticeable, but brush lines were very much in evidence. Three more coats finally started to tone down the brush strokes and make the luminous green paint ‘pop’. That information told me the workshop repaint was very likely one or two coats at most, and very likely done in normal workshop lighting.
The DS102 paint was very much a paste and applied rather easily. There was no spreading of the phosphors away from the brush and in the attached photos; only three coats were needed to reach the same level of coverage as the thinner DS50.
I had initially hoped the nice crisp satin white paint was what the finished result would be, but now having worked with this paint and seeing how it matches wartime original looks, I am quite pleased.
David
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