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I just got my first box of True North paint in.  Haven't used it yet and know nothing about it beyond their website and a couple of telephone conversations with the company president.  I'll let you know what I think about it as I start using it.  About all I can tell you right now is that I'll be using it in my next Modelbuilding Guide ebook, I opened a couple of bottles and I like what I see, definitely thick enough to hand brush nicely, still thin enough to airbrush without being prethinned AND it isn't an acrylic.  Oh, yeah, one more thing.  The FS numbers are on the back of the label in font that's large enough to actually read.  Odd place, you say?  Well, it beats having it squeezed down to the point you need an Optivisor in order to read it on the front of the label.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hang in there, Mark.  I know I'm running slow getting to the True North paint, but my wife's recovery from knee replacement surgery has slowed things down considerably.  Finishing an ambulance for a client and will then turn my attention to True North.

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  • 2 months later...

I have a little to report on True North Paints.  I recently bought some to try and save an old model that I had messed up  -- or at least painted in the wrong color!

To explain, many, many moons ago, I did a SAC version of the C-47D (or it may also have another designation?!).  But, since I was working from just a small B&W photo, I got the colors wrong.

After using the ol' Mk 1 A1 Eyeball, I decided that the bands of color should be yellow, as they were sort of mid-range color:

 

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Only after taking the then newly-finished model to a model contest,  was I politely informed that the yellow color was mostly only used on rescue type aircraft, not on other types.  Doh!  (Oops -- just hit the wrong thing and posted the article before the end... guess I'm just full of errors...)

Anyway, after slinking home from the contest, I hid the model for decades way in back on the bottom shelf of the display cabinet, thinking that perhaps one day, I could salvage it.  The main problems were that the lettering and all the cheat lines came from old Stoppel silk-screened decals, and were no longer available.  Plus, I did not have enough left in the stash to risk masking and raising them from the model, which is finished in Metalizer and Model Master paints, with either no topcoat or the thin Metalizer clear top coat.  Also, I could not find any paint that I trusted enough to try hand-painting.

Fast forward to present times, and here comes True North Paints.  According to their mission statement type talk on their website, they reject any color that they cannot both hand brush and airbrush.  Time to test them out!

 

I ordered just the various reds and oranges of the conspicuity types for this project, as I didn't know which color I needed.  After research (wish I'd had the internet 40 years ago!), I found that it depended upon the year, so I proceeded with a bottle of their Fluorescent Red, FS-28915, and a hairy stick:

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After one coat, above on the underside of the left wingtip, the paint covered pretty well.  I was not trying for a single-coat finish, so put the paint on rather thin, and then after the first coat had dried, added a second coat:

 

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Although hard to tell from this picture, there are almost no brush strokes after the second coat had dried.  You can however, still see a tiny bit of the yellow underneath, but certainly looks better than the bare yellow.  Also, having yellow as a base coat, rather than the usual white, make the paint look not as fluorescent, but I'll settle!

The whole thing has been done in two coats (a little third coat touch-up here and there), all except for the nose, where thankfully, if my hand brushing skills aren't good enough to save the decals, I still have enough from the stash for just that area:

 

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I'm sure you'll agree, it's starting to look a LOT better now -- if only I could do something about that old, yellowed white paint...

I still don't know how it airbrushes, but as far as I'm concerned it hand brushes as good as ( maybe slightly better then) the old Humbrol tins.

 

Ed

 

 

 

 

Edited by TheRealMrEd
cut off last half of post
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