Fleet Colors

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Task    To bring these Fleet paint samples to you through the website!!

Reality      Computer Matching      Computer Color Management      Best Solution      Using this paint guide!!

Reality

One of the hardest things about building an accurate model Laker is trying to find the right color of paint. I struggled for a long time with color matching on my Edmund Fitzgerald. Matching paint off photos is really a matter of best guessing, there are just too many variables. You can match the color close and most people won’t be able to tell the difference, but it’s real easy to get it very wrong as well. Myself I wish to be as accurate as possible, and that’s what this article is about, I talk about the problems involved and the solution I finally settled on.

The only real practical way to match colors is through photos, but the environment plays many tricks on the colors: Sun and clouds, glair and shadows, film itself and film processing along with fading or discoloring and paint itself fading or dirty. Any one of these alone can give you a drastic color differences, even with the best of photos it’s difficult. Another problem is paint supply companies and there batches changing over the years, also fleets changing paint suppliers.

Computer Matching

I’ve also tried a handful of places that do computer matching off photos, Home Depot, Lowes and Pittsburg Paints to name a few. I took the photo in to have scanned and they mix up some paint for me. They all tell me the same thing “It’s a lot of trial and error”. Noting to me all the problems I just listed above. So I gave it a shot only latter to find it not to my liking.

So after many frustrated moments, I decided working off photos was just not going to work.  Then I thought I found a simple solution. The key was having the actual paint from the supplier or fleet (the paint itself and/or “color swatches”). However achieving these paint samples was another story, but over the years with the help of many people, I managed to collection many samples!!

So thinking I’m all set I took the color swatches I had to Home Depot to give the computer matching another try, they got a good scan, but same thing “It’s still takes some trial and error” I matched the paint to the swatch, having them tweak the color here and there, finally getting it to look right. The color was real close, I thought great I’m all set and can share these color codes with everyone else on the website. I then learned the color code they gave me only applies to that particular brand of paint. It is NOT a standard paint code number?? I thought this is useless, what if a modeler has a difficult time finding that brand. The final straw for me was when I had more paint mixed up for a buddy of mine using the codes I receive before. Only to find the paint came out a totally different shade. I thought where’s the accuracy in that? What’s the point?

Computer Color Management

So I have a bunch of paint samples “color swatches”, the problem became sharing these samples with the rest of the Great Lake Modelers. I again thought I found a reasonable solution. I scanned these color swatches in the computer, then provide a downloadable color swatch that everyone can printout. Then take them to your local hobby shop, Home Depot or where ever and match the paints yourself.

Well again that won’t work either. The simple fact all computers, printers and monitors are different, even digital camera’s and different. Now this can be worked around be using “Color Management” and Profiling. However so much is involved and is so complicated that it’s not practical by any means.

Best Solution

My final solution came when I realized how much the real fleet colors change over the years. Perfect example is the Edmund Fitzgerald. Look at all the photos of her online, notice how much the color differs from on shot to the next. Example http://www.mhsd.org/fleet/O/On-Columbia/fitz/default.htm

Solution is I simple match these paint samples to readily available paints such as Hobby Enamels. Ironically I found many of the colors to match many railroad colors available. The paints I found are very accurate to the paints samples, any slight difference can be argued as natural variation in the real world. So my task is to match up as many colors as I can to readily available paints. A task proving to work well!!

Hope you can make use of these samples. Special thanks to Tom Skater, John Sarns, Scott Tomlinson, people of: Algoma Marine, Interlake, Purvis Marine, Hannah Marine, Ferris Marine and the many others pointing me in the right direction.

Using this paint guide!!

• Decryption: Location on the boat.

• Year: Years this color was used. Note this is a best guess, more research may be needed to narrow your project down.

• Paint: Suggested paint manufacture to used.

• Description: Manufacture paint description.

• # : Manufacture paint number or code.

• Notes: Any details to help guide you in your project.

• Text, images and links are listed on the bottom to better help your research.

• Paints listed are very accurate and matched up to the actual paints used by the fleets.

• If mixing is required a detail mix ratio will be listed.

• Some colors are basic like Black, White or True Red or Greens. Other paint manufactures can be used other then what’s listed.

• If there is a ? near the year!! What I am having a hard time with is the years a fleet used a particular color. Anything prior to the 1940's should be looked into further.