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Here are a few of my customs, let me know what you think.

Not sure if I want to go with the gold trim or not on these. Might do one with and one without.


Impressed myself with the color match on this one. Still need to clean this one a bit.


I just can't find the right color for this one but it's close.


Thanks for looking!

They all look great.

AH! Maroon Spykers, these are nice and interesting wheel choices, both geniune designs fitted to this model when new.

Ghosty.

Osram is a shade more a lighter blue and a two tone green Spyker would be nice. In the old catalogue they showed it in a B&W pic and looked to be dark body light chassis so maybe a dark green with cream chassis. Seen to many fake maroon Spykers on Ebay and one on not long ago at very high price but definitely a fake according to the base. I've always found the silver and gold trim hard to get right with modern paints.

The 'Hand Trimming' paint used by Lesney in those early days was of a different ratio to todays modern paints.The actual colour pigments (The Gold and Silver), was held in a thicker suspension fluid to help prevent it from running while the operators painted the trim on the models, and that's what gives those painted details that distinctive thickly painted look, seen on many 'Yesteryear' models to good effect.

Ghosty.

GHOSTHUNTER wrote:The 'Hand Trimming' paint used by Lesney in those early days was of a different ratio to todays modern paints.The actual colour pigments (The Gold and Silver), was held in a thicker suspension fluid to help prevent it from running while the operators painted the trim on the models, and that's what gives those painted details that distinctive thickly painted look, seen on many 'Yesteryear' models to good effect.

Ghosty.

There is a difference between paints. There is silver argent and silver leaf paints. The latter actually has tiny flakes of the metal (powdered metal) that binds together as the medium dries. Because of the difference in solids, the "leaf" paints tend to be thicker than the argent. What determines wether a paint is an argent or a leaf has as much to do with the Rule of Tincture as it does formula. Regarding formulas, the content of solids is another slippery slope (and important to the quality of the product). Expense rises in direct relation of the content of solids. The less expensive the paint, the lesser the content of metal solids. The lower content of metal solids can translate to a thin product with poor coverage and performance.

There is a basic rule of thumb for all paints. The greater the content of solids combined with the quality of the solids are a major factor. The finer the "grind" of the solids result in a higher quality of paint. Cheaper paints use inexpensive "fillers" to boost the volume of solids (combined with a coarser grind) and this affects the paint's performance. The vehicle is the solvent portion of the mix and the viscosity of the vehicle is greatly determined by the grind and ratio of solids in the vehicle. Expensive paints have a much finer grind and more solids per ounce than inexpensive paints and it really is a case of you get what you pay for.

The bottom line is that there are silver and gold "paints" available that are little changed since the days that Lesney applied them to their models. One just needs to use a quality paint with a high solids content.

Thank's Tinman,

So it is possible to buy modern paints with similar properties to the original paints used by Lesney, this must be quite useful for restorations and any minor touching-up on really good models marred only by slight chipping of the painted trim, such as grille and bumpers etc.

Your detailed explanation paint properties is very interesting, does that mean (as the name implies), 'Metalflake' paints have added metal particles of a larger size, designed to catch the light for that special 'Custom' effect finish.

GHOSTHUNTER.

GHOSTHUNTER wrote:does that mean (as the name implies), 'Metalflake' paints have added metal particles of a larger size, designed to catch the light for that special 'Custom' effect finish.

GHOSTHUNTER.

Yes, pretty much that's it. In some paints, those "particles" can be other things besides metal too.

GHOSTHUNTER wrote:So it is possible to buy modern paints with similar properties to the original paints used by Lesney, this must be quite useful for restorations and any minor touching-up on really good models marred only by slight chipping of the painted trim, such as grille and bumpers etc.

One down side to this is that these trim paints can fool spectrographic paint testing and they show up nearly identical to the original paints. This means, if you use the right paint, you can't be sure that gold trim Matchbox 20a or 19a (for example) are authentic. On the other hand, rest assured that the body color of models can be tested and it's extremely difficult to find a current product that will fool the test.

Personally, I am anti touch-up (or touch-in) as these models can find their way into the hands of a second owner who has no idea it's been altered. For me, it's all or nothing at all. A while back, I bought a small collection for resale. So many of the models turned out to be touched in that it was disturbing. I had to go over all of them trying to find the touched in spots and make sure that it was noted in the listings. Some of them were done very well and hard to spot ... but it's still tampering.

Tinman wrote:I had to go over all of them trying to find the touched in spots and make sure that it was noted in the listings. Some of them were done very well and hard to spot ...

I don't know if it's actually true, but I've heard that a UV light (also called a darklight) is good for spotting touch-ups.

Likewise Tinman, I do not touch-up (or touch-in) any of my models, I prefere them...'As Is', Wharts and All.

GHOSTHUNTER.