Dunkelgelb - RAL 7028 - Establishing The True Colour - Inside Track | Renault TSF Tank Kent

We have made many attempts to determine the correct colour and finish of all the paints in our restoration projects. Our most recent projects - the Renault FT and TSF provided a fertile learning ground and helped us understand the process and pitfalls in establishing the correct paint colour and finish for paint. This experience was primarily gained through sourcing NCS coded paints established through SEM or X Ray analysis by our expert paint conservation partners. This proved particularly testing given how small or degenerated the paint residue was on the artefacts. Much of the WW1 paint samples had been reduced to powder over the past century providing a very challenging task for the team. Our new armoured car projects are a wholly different exercise. There are many more examples of the German paints used throughout WW2 than we had for the French WW1 tanks. Many of our WW2 era vehicles have a wide range of original artefacts from which to draw from for each colour. The results established by our paint conservation scientists were not consistent and a few decisions were needed to make the call on which colour was the most reliable. This meant using only samples that had not been exposed to UV or sunlight, rain, cold, general exposure, handling and rust. We also had to consider if the sample had originally been mixed correctly etc. The cleaner and less exposed the sample had been over the past 70 plus years the better. The Renault FT and TSF had been painted in the assembly hall under the supervision of the Section de Camouflage. This assembly hall paint treatment was also true for the Germans for Dunkelgrau (dark grey) and Dunkelgelb (tan) and the earlier paint schemes prior to 1941 were also applied by the assembler. Equipment delivered from March 1943 was painted all over in Dunkelgelb (tan) to be later camouflaged in theatre with green and brown. From autumn 1944 even, the camouflage was applied in the assembly hall. Next we must consider that the tint of pre-1941 Dunkelgrau is different due to the switch in the chemical base of the paint to include the less expensive Lithopone (sulphide of zinc white). Prior to inclusion of Lithopone the Dunkelgrau appeared darker. The Dunkelgelb match we selected for trial treatment was one sampled from a rear Notek convoy lamp which was still in its original packing case which it had been in since WW2. This was the best untarnished sample we and the paint conservation unit settled on. SEM and X-ray analysis of the various artefacts bearing Dunkelgelb matched the paint from the convoy lamp – the round rad panzer hub armour from a 4 or 5 Serie le.Pz.Sp.Wg armoured car. Linking original RAL codes to current RAL classic offerings is tricky as most of the wartime colours no longer adhere to the same numbering regime. Hilary Doyle and Tom Jentz’s work on the subject is immense. Projected paint colours were achieved by using original colour cards and matching them to the closest available colour cards at RAL. To achieve this the RAL scientists met with Hilary Doyle and Tom Jentz over a series of meetings in St Augustin in Germany. One example of the outcome was that Dunkelgrau RAL 7021 has a closest match in the current RAL Classis as RAL 8012. Other colours have their closest match in the RAL Design System. . The huge SEM and XRF work we have done with Lincoln Conservation provides another perspective into this vital world of paint. An NCS range of paint codes has been extracted from our numerous original German WW2 artefacts. This provides another view of wartime colour - but time impacted the ultimate colour. This is due to leeching from one colour to another, UV, exposure to the elements, rust etc. Without another data source this is the only way back to those colours. The analysis done by the specialists in Lincoln will hopefully be linked to the RAL investigation (a bridge) for us to get a true understanding of what the colours were. The bridge work is underway. We will now have new sample batches of paint mixed to establish how closely they match the original colours. Our Zundapp KS 750 is a very good test case for trial use of this new paint mix. It never had any other paint treatment except for red oxide primer. We have placed all of the various SEM and X-Ray NCS paint findings into a database to table the German WW2 paint analysis results over the years and compare them with historical RAL data.

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