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Thanks Ron, that's a nice addition!
Dean
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You are mostly correct on the whites with the exception that titanium dioxide started being used for some formulas starting in WWI. Lead and zinc oxides were however more common until WWII. I think cost may have have initially been the issue with titanium dioxide being used less. This holds true for USN and RN paints during WWI which is the era I found formulas for both navies.
Black depends what pigment was called out. The RN tended to use bone or ivory black during WWI and those are the brownish blacks. The USN used either Old Abe Black or lampblack (not carbon black). Old Abe was a bone or ivory black. Lampblack the USN had very specific requirements going back into the nineteen-aughts. It was and probably still is gas process made by collecting the soot of openly burning acetylene on an angled steel plate, it's about as neutral a black as you can get and until Vanta Black was the standard for the blackest black. During WWI lampblack was only specified by both navies for the grays and black, other colors requiring black pigment usually used the bone blacks. Here I think it was probably scale of production making the use of bone blacks more common. After WWI the USN mostly used lampblack although you sometimes find Mars Black the iron oxide based pigment called out.
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Strictly speaking (I was a coatings chemist), knowing a ratio of white to black does not necessarily give you the correct color unless you also know how much white pigment and how much black pigment are in each base color. An additional complication is knowing exactly what pigments were used. At that time, lead oxide and zinc oxide were most often used in white. Todays paints typically use titanium dioxide which is much "whiter" than lead or zinc oxides. For black, the pigment used then was often carbon black which is also true today. However, todays carbon black is much purer and hence blacker. Older carbon blacks tended more toward a brownish black.
I don't wish to complicate things for you, just throwing this out as a bit of knowledge. The best way to match is with a colorimeter although, in our cases, the Mark I Eyball is often good enough.
Dean
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Hello all, I'm wanting to model my Dreadnought kit as she appeared during her visit to Bermuda in early 1907.
I'm thinking this is before the well know Admiralty directive for the 20 to 1 White to Black Home fleet paint mix was published.
Does anybody know if I'm correct here?.
Thank You, David in Hot & humid Malolos
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