The weather has dried out for a couple days so I finally got some color on the top of the wings. I bought 4 gallons of the clear Poly-Tone base so I can mix my own colors. I also bought a quart of Blush Retarder to slow the drying and help with mixing the pigments. Austin at Preferred Air Parts was very helpful.
I found a plastic lid, at the hardware store, for the gallon can which has a small poor spout. It allows me to easily poor small amounts of the base without making a mess.
Based on my color formulas I measure the pigments into my mortar. This mix is for making 1 quart of the dark brown, Chestnut, color. It uses Lamp Black, Chrome Orange, Chrome Yellow, Burnt Sienna, and Alizarine Red.
When I did this with dope I used one of the plasticizers for mixing the pigment. With Poly-Tone I used some blush retarder, 4 teaspoons for a quart of Poly-Tone. It gave me a liquid which wouldn't dry quickly while grinding the pigments and it helps the Poly-Tone flow out the brush marks before it drys.
You grind the pigments with the pestle until you get a good even color mix. You can see the color change as you grind it together.
The hardware store sells empty paint cans. My little paint spatula bends nicely to scrape most of the mix from the mortar. When I did this with dope I used a little thinner to wash the last of the pigments from the mortar. The Poly-Tone is already very runny so I didn't want to add thinner. Instead I cleaned it a couple times with a couple tablespoons of the clear Poly-Tone. It worked pretty good but I didn't get it as clean as with thinner so I used 1/4 more pigments to allow for some not getting to the can.
Once the pigment mix was in the can I added the aluminum powder. For this color it takes 14.75 ml, 3 teaspoons of aluminum.
Then I fill the can 1/2 with Poly-Tone and shake it vigorously for 3 minutes. I don't know if less will work as well but 3 minutes is all my arms can take. I then finish filling the can and shake it another minute. The Poly-Tone is so runny you need to stir it often while painting.
I start with the lightest color and work to the darkest so each color can overlap about 1/4". The beige seems a little lighter than the dope on the fuselage but the other colors match very well. 2 coats seem to get a good even color.
The process is pretty simple. I draw the pattern on the surface with a soft lead pencil, which won't bleed through the Poly-Tone. The patterns used by each of the SPAD subcontractors were so consistent that they must have had a pattern they traced for each surface. Mine were free handed from my sketch.
I mixed a quart of each color, except Black for which I only made a pint. It looks like I'll need another quart or 2 of beige and light green. Originally I planned to mix a gallon of each of these colors but I'll never use that much.
I finished the center section and ailerons. I've got one coat on the top of the lower wings, none on the upper wings.
I also got the first coat on the blue for the lower wing roundels. The blue and the black both seem much weaker with Poly-Tone than they did with dope. I probably could have doubled the amount of pigments in the blue, and I used 4 times a much lamp black to get it to cover in 2 coats. Mind you, I used 4 teaspoons of lamp black in a pint of Poly-Tone, and I have 5 quarts of lamp black dust. I won't use it up in a thousand years.
I did find the Poly-Tone a pain to brush compared to dope. It runs easily and you get bubbles easily while brushing. I'm getting the hang of it and it looks great. I really like the look. Because of the aluminum powder you see every brush stroke so it has much more life to it. It also looks Like WWI French Camouflage would have looked.
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