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Re: 1937 Paint
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Home away from home
 
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I assume you are bringing the car to the place and they are using their spectrographic tool to do the match.
Okay so the next issue is the base the paint is going onto. If you are doing this yourself I guess you are making spray test cards and holding them up to the vehicle. Experienced paint guys with a good eye for color will take the material and test tints until they get what they want. It's a time consuming process that body shops also experience because of things like fading and sun damage. We were doing this Packard where the owner wanted the chassis to match the body. The painter made up dozens of test cards. A few times I have seen an exact match on one part of the car and then way off on another part. Some uninsured idiot ran into my modern car and I fixed it myself. I blended at the curves, but couldn't avoid one flat surface where there is slight blend line. On these modern cars they come out of the plant with mismatches so it's not a big deal except this moron hit me when the car was brand new and that was a total bummer. A great example is the old Bill Hirsch engine paint. If you used a light color primer you would get a milder green that a lot of people really like the look of.
Posted on: 2022/7/12 13:43
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Re: 1937 Paint
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Home away from home
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The Hirsch engine colors, especially the gray, seemed to vary quite a bit from batch to batch with some being relatively light in color and others being noticeably darker.
Posted on: 2022/7/12 18:51
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Re: 1937 Paint
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Home away from home
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Interesting others more recently shared my 1975 experience with Bill Hirsch, who sold me "Packard Blue" which wasn't quite, for a '40 120 I then owned.
An ophthalmologist who did much work on his own sharp '33 Pierce-Arrow explained how viewing a paint sample against a black background helps you see it better. Lotta soft, elegant, understated, forgotten original colors. Color can make or break a car.
Posted on: 2022/7/12 19:26
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Re: 1937 Paint
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Forum Ambassador
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My friend Chris owns a top end restoration shop. He has a something like a $4,000 camera to color match paint. Even with that, and computerized mixing, there is no such thing as an exact match. This has to do with the brand of paint, whether it is a using current formulation materials compared to what is on the car, and how it is sprayed, and how it is buffed out. He can get damn close, whether its a half million dollar Porsche, or a repair job on a 5 year old Nissan truck. But there is never, ever, such a thing as an exact match.
Posted on: 2022/7/12 19:30
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Re: 1937 Paint
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Home away from home
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Quote:
Yes on the spectrophotometer. I've taken the car in, I also left a spare wheel with them as well. I understand that getting an exact match is near impossible, but was hoping to get a very close match. The guys at the shop have tried and with their cards they look close, but when sprayed on a small section of the wheel it's off quite a bit. Just thought maybe I'd get lucky and have a color code or something to work with.
Posted on: 2022/7/13 2:49
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Re: 1937 Paint
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Quote:
I understand that getting an exact match is near impossible, but was hoping to get a very close match. Just thought maybe I'd get lucky and have a color code or something to work with.
Posted on: 2022/7/13 2:52
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Re: 1937 Paint
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Home away from home
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your issue may not be the color match per se. You are using a spectrophotometer and the body paint reference on a non-metallic color. This is all in your favor. I can think of a couple other factors. Illumination and viewing angle also impact what we see. The color will not look exactly the same on a wheel as on a body panel.
The spectrophotometer reads the pattern of light reflection from the standard. It does this correctly and consistently. Then to come up with a match it overlays the spectra of the pigments it has been loaded with to get a close match. Therefore the options it has available depend on the pigments the paint company has loaded. Trying a different paint company's library may improve your match.
Posted on: 2022/7/13 8:11
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Re: 1937 Paint
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Home away from home
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Regarding Hirsch, we used to make fun of some of his colors like black because you couldn't get pigments dark enough to match the old stuff. Take Packard blue, which is like 9 parts black and one part blue, or almost black after 40 years of the blue fading out of it. It's all an approximation using the original ratios.
I think his products have stood the test of time because I have seen 50 year old paint jobs that have held up really well. However, we always ordered enough paint to have at least a gallon left over for touch up, and extra engine paint, chassis paint, etcetera. Some of these modern paints are crazy. I have a can of oil based exterior paint that darkened sitting in the can after six months. Besides hand tinting, putting the camera on the new material and checking the consistency of the result might help a little. Some people are really good with colors. We had an upholstery guy who could match up leathers that were 40 years old. A car would come in with worn out cushions and he could match the colors so that you couldn't tell. I was impressed by that stuff.
Posted on: 2022/7/13 10:55
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