[MississippiMan]

I can add another older, and more original version to the slowly growing list of Neutral White / Silver mixes that include C&S.

RS-MaxxMudd dates to early 2005.

16 oz. Delta Pearl Metallic #02601
10 oz. Delta Silver Metallic #02603
7 oz. UPW flat
3 oz. Folk Art (Plaid) Champaigne Metallic "Gold"
14 oz. Minwax Polycrylic - Satin finish
14 oz. distilled/tap water

The above is a VERY neutral mix, and one that outperformed the Stewart FireHawk completely across the Spectral Curve. It was also the first DIY Mix / Application that specifically improved Contrast (...hence ambient viewing potential..) while maintaining virtually pristine white levels. (...with some of the newer finds...what might it do today?)

Obviously, the addition of the Metallic Gold was to balance the small degree of Blue shift the metallic induced Gray hue introduced. The substitution of the Delta Ceramcoat paints for the Behr paints made for spectacular results that were lacking in the use of the coarser Behr Metallics. It was a Silver Metallic that was several shades lighter in hue, so by virtue of that, correcting any introduced push was all the more easier.

Tod (Tiddler) did extensive testing on the RS-MaxxMudd application, so in that respect, it was a "proven" example of a Neutral "Light Silver-White" screen.

All that remained to complete the trip into a truly dedicated Ambient Light Screen was the addition of specific Red-Green-Blue elements (w/Antique or Champagne Gold) to achieve as Light into Dark a surface as was needed.

Simple? No. Many chose to find fault with that when no other fault was found. But it really was only being compared to neutral Grays....and those applications didn't stand a chance in comparison. Benven's CGII & CGIII were Polar opposites to RS-MaxxMudd, but they of course were based primarily on "Increased gain".

But is RS-MaxxMudd doable by today's DIY standards? You betcha! It Rolled on and Sprayed like a dream.

Harp, your efforts to try to find a White that will mix with Silver without a Push might help simplify things a bit, but it is a hearkening back to simple basics that guided all of us long before. What we did not possess was the definitive "Base that does it all" That does seem to be getting awfully close though!

And yes, many of us did indeed develop the ability to "reckon" our way into neutrality, and we had to, because anything that had a undesirable "push' was simply....well, undesirable. It's not as if we were blind to the obvious miscues. No....we tried, and if something died, it was cast away ad another "idea" took it's place.

Funny thing was....back then, there were a few souls who took it upon themselves to make sure we all knew that they themselves had "been there...done that". But the real truth was we were revisiting their older applications and doing them netter, and from some of it actually coming up with original ideas as well.

To have a wealth of data and confirmed tests that show what is "neutral' and what is not is the real advantage many such as yourself now enjoy. The lessons learned since '02 on AVS pointed the direction toward the plateau we all exist on nowadays. While it can be honestly said that the effort to qualify and quantify potential ingredients is really just a reshuffling of the components of older known concepts, what's really important is the improvement such reshuffling can bring / is bringing.

In my reasoning, the real advance made recently is a completely color correcting "Base" to which Silver or Aluminum can be added. (BB)

Adjusting a "off Base" Base to compensate for varying amounts of introduced "Blue Push" needs no magical spell....the way has been know for sometime. Add some degree of hue between Red and Yellow. But it can be time consuming and frustrating if you don't nail it down quickly. Take it too far and you have a Red Push, and that is harder to deal with.

As I said above, C&S is noteworthy because it is both trying it's hand at reducing the Mix down to two components. You want to / have to add yellow, then try doing it as a original component of the Base. T'would be more original a find fer sure!

Good luck with it all, and I hope you can go on to create something really original to honor the C&S moniker. Everybody would benefit from such a simple creation.