Hello SteffenK,
I thought you would jump on this *
And as usual you ask the right questions *
O.K., first thing I would like to mention is that this will become a multi level experiment of which this one is just the first step. I hope to get some insperations of what else might be of interest from postings like your´s.
By the way, the origin of the fabric used for this first phase, as for the upcomming ones, was the same the piece I sent to you came from. You remember? That one I got from my grandma.
Well, now to your questions:
1. Yes in our opinion the "blueish/grey" was applied the same way as the olive was. (scantly = thinly)
- a. This is what we see in all the photographs that are available to us. I have posted one to illustrate this with my previous thread on the "Fokker Factory Streaky Finish" (which one I lost out of sight, unfortunately).
here is another copy for you to see what I mean:
b. I do not think that this can be explained by a difference in tranclucent value of the olive green paint. This is a totaly different color which was not paid attention to before. You can see this at many photographs.
c. Another evidience is the quantity of the paint components given with the Fokker factory drawings that would mix up for the underside paint. This would be about 2 Liters of paint for one wing alone!!!! Too much for a undersurface alone. Of course only in my eye again.
d. This whithout doubt generates a very usefull, smple and light weighting multicolor shade camouflage paint.
e. Wouldn´t you have done the same? *???
f. No, I have not been to the IWM yet, since it turned out that the fabrics held there are just 50mm times 50mm in size. I have still in mind to go there, but for now I will relay on what Dave Watts tells us, since he is there just now and takes a look. I do not feel like his observations will bring us much new things. We can not even use any shades of colors he might tell, since these are 85 years old. Our experiments have just to get that old to compare with today´s observations of original triplane or any other Fokker paint pieces.
2. Yes it is. Apart from that light was changing that day and I do not have an idea how to eliminate these effects to produce compareable images. My idea now is to cut the fabric to small pieces in the end, putting them on data sheets and adding a piece of untreated (no paint, no dope, no wheathering) fabric, a small field of the actual paints whithout the oil varnishes and some inscriptions. Some of these I will give away free to you and other interested researchers for direct compare. Some I will offer for sale on ebay.
3. The shift exists. In order to create the piece in a way it could have been done at Fokker, I paid not much attention to the contribution of the paint. Unfortunately by doing so a large plain field of the light underside color is underneath the green now *
. The shift to a very pale light turquoise is nevertheless very clearly visible. You will see at the end when I send you your sample.
4. The experiment will be carefully documented (copies will come with your piece). This way we will be able to compare all the pieces at the end directly and to see how they differed and what influences caused what change.
I have not yet thought about applying the paint on metal surfaces such like aluminium or steel to see how they come out. This is one of the usefull suggestions I hoped to receive here - Nobody is perfect! *;D Thanks for this suggestion.
Any more questions so far?
best
Achim