"Floquil / Polly-S WWII Naval Colors?" Topic

I was thining of buying 5-10 colors from this line, but I need to do it online as my local hobby store has a very limited paint selection. Floquil / Polly-S supposedly has very authentic paints for the period, so I figured I'd just buy them rather than try to figure out if I could wing it.

Anyone recommend a store that cuts a good deal on price and shipping? I'm talking about ten colors or so, probably a $50 USD paint order.

Thanks for any tips!

I buy them at a local store that has decent prices and usually has them all in stock:

valleybest.com/smithbros

Unfortunately they don't do the order via internet thing, but you might want to call or send an email to see what they've got and about their shipping policy.

What particular colors are you looking for? I may have excess on a few of the U.S. colors.

Walthers still has some on hand even though they are dropping the military line.
link

Another option to consider is White Ensign Models.

Supposedly their colors are quite accurate too.

They come in small, metal tins.

For Floquil I use Testors.com. Competively priced and usually ship very fast.

Did Testors buy Floquil / Polly-S? I thought Floquil bought Polly-S. Who can keep track of this stuff???

Testors bought Polly-S around 15 years ago.

so who owns Floquil? Also Testors?

The Floquil colors for the USN appear to be gone. I guess Testors canned them when they bought them out. No pun intended. I'll have to try POlly-S to see what's happened to them.

OK, I'm really out of the loop. I really liked Polly S and suddenly they were no longer available. Probably about 15 years ago I was told they went out of business and stopped making it. 8 years ago I told they went out of business and stopped making it (except the railroad colors). Now, they've been making it all along?

White ensign has the colors in their line, but many are out of stock, including ALL the IJN grays. Very discouraging. Makes you want to just wing the whole thing and forget about authentic colors completely.

yes, Polly-S is still making colors, but their military line is now a bit haphazard.

I'm making a USN and an IJN Pacific fleets. Like to buy the "authentic colors", but it really seems like too much bother.

My 2 cents on this topic follows. Bottles/tins of "authentic color" are probably not needed for small-scale wargaming ship models. The concept of "scale color" involves modifying/lightening the full-scale, real-world colors, anyway. The thinking behind this is that color on a real ship, viewed from 2 feet away, is darker than the same color viewed from miles away, due to the diffusing effect of the intervening atmosphere. Note that the smaller the scale of the model, the farther away (in terms of scale distance) it is being viewed from.

So using the above concept/rationalization, I merely define unique base color(s) for each country, and take it from there. My base colors will be lighter than the real thing to simulate viewing from a distance, and to compensate for my dim indoor lighting. My base colors are also designed to be compatible with my ocean playing surface (which is currently on the light side).

Mark H.

megahobby.com

Hinds, totally agree and good points I am considering as I paint my models. My problem is that I've a dearth of color pics and cant' wing the paint colors. While many would argue that "grey is gray is grae", I wanted to start with the authentic colors – is possible – and if not at least use the recommendations in the Navy Camo book by Clash of Arms Games. However, a few years have resulted in many of the colors disappearing from being bought out.

The easiest way to buy from a source seems to be White Ensign, however they're out of stock on MANY colors, and are discontinuing the Italian Naval colors completely. Shame, as their prices are quite good. I will say that they've been very helpful via email, and did claim that they're rapidly catching up on their unavailable stock.

Oberst Radl: Megahobby looks good – all the paints I'm trying to find in one location! This'll make it a lot easier to get things figured out.

Hesse,

That's the only place I could find that carries the Foquil and Testors, in acrylic and oil-base. White Ensign has been variously OOS of many colors for a year (I check back occasionally). And if using a manufacturer's idea of Dunkelgelb or "IJN 1943 Mid-June Before 4:00 p.m. Grey Blue" works for you (as it occasionally does for me) then go for it. Good luck.

Keep checking back on White Ensign--we've broken the logjam.

And now almost 4 years later, but 2 years late, I find that Floquil and Polly S are not made at all any more.

I had been using Polly S US Desert Storm Sand for my ship's wooden decks but no resupply on that front.

I scanned that color and retouched and got the digital CMYK color: C32 M36 Y63 K3 (or RGB: R176 G153 B110). But your screen will probably display it differently.

I switched to Vallejo, but there are no good matches for my favorite Polly-S deck colors.

So my plan is to custom mix an entire bottle of Vallejo to match. To make it reproduceable, I am limiting myself to using only 2 colors, and recording the number of drops of each (i.e. 27 drops of "A" and 26 drops of "B").

MH