My Cream&Sugar attempt

**robert_1967** · **02-09-09, 05:00 AM**

Hi all.

I've set my heart on mixing and evaluating a so called "simple mix" paint with ingredients found in Sweden. Ideally we can find ingredients found in all of Europe.

So, its all based on the research of Harpmakers and HTS gurus.

The silver ingredient I have bought is from http://www.pandurohobby.se. It's called "Hobbylack". The odd thing is that you can not find it on their homepage. But looking in their web version of catalogue:
http://viewer.zmags.com/showmag.php?...&_x=1#/page218
You find it as color number 69. It is a "no-rainbow-effect" acrylic silver.

I am investigating the correct OEM name, because the Swedish company has their own lables on it and refuse to talk about were it comes from.

...to be continued...

**robert_1967** · **02-09-09, 05:13 AM**

new intel...

I managed to squize my self into the company headquarter and get hold of some one in the purchasing dept. To my astonishment, they actually buy the silver paint prelabled directly from Pebeo. So, my bad.

What I instead did was to ask for their health and safety information about this paint. Hopefully I will be able to match this one to one of the paints on Pebeos home page.

**robert_1967** · **02-10-09, 03:25 AM**

Another day in the glorious search for the holy N9 :-)

During normal shoping withv the wify, I slipped into a paint shop. There I saw that they do sell gold and silver paint by the litre. Still pricy, about the same volume-price I payed for the 250ml bottle. They had painted samples. The dry sample was silver shiny with no identifiable flakes. Just silver.

Is that what I should be looking for?

Anyway, at home I took a deep breath and mixed white gloss 5 with the silver I bought previously. Ratio 2 white : 1 silver. Up with the sample board. One coat before going to bed and another coat this morning. I will take pictures.

Now, a question to the likes of Harp and mech....and please excuse me for my ignorence...why the silver paint? Are we using the silver paint to obtain a perfect color balanced N9? So the actual "shiny" property of the silver is not relevant here. We are not creating a "dark mirror", right? It's just a way to obtain gray that otherwise is very hard to create?

**Harpmaker** · **02-10-09, 12:27 PM**

My guess would be that if you could see individual flakes of silver in the dried sample, that paint would be too coarse to use in a screen mix. The flakes act as little mirrors and if they are too big they actually reflect too much light and are too bright.

Never be afraid to ask questions, that is how we learn.

We use silver for two reasons; to darken a mix to improve perceived screen contrast and to provide a reflective element to the paint. The reflective nature of the silver paint is part of the plan. The small silver "mirrors" are dispersed throughout the white paint, this darkens the paint a bit (actually a lot when using aluminum flakes), but each flake (or mirror) dries in a random position which helps give a random reflection angle to the light that hits it. Reflection from gloss is only a surface phenomenon while even the silver flakes that are below the surface are still reflecting light when using metallic particles since very few paints are truly opaque.

It is fairly easy to create a neutral gray paint without using silver paint. We want the reflective "mirror-like" nature of the particles, it provides a boost in white-level of the image without hotspotting. Due to the randomness of the particles in the mix we do not get a "dark mirror", but millions of little bright mirrors that help boost image brightness without hotspotting. It is a very interesting effect.

**robert_1967** · **02-10-09, 03:36 PM**

Well, all I can say, it seems to work

My sample board has cured 18 hours beside a very gentle heating element.

Up on the wall it gently deepens the black but still gives "punch" in the white. I have not tuched the calibration. It is impossible to do that with such a small sample 0.5m x 0.8m. So for my naked eye it seemed that very bright scenes, every so littlte tilted to the blue but with basically the same brightness.

Up really really close to the screen with a bright picture you can see millions of tiny tiny flakes shining back at you

The positive effect is more obvious if you let some stray light in. Then you clearly see that the black on the white is grey and the black on the grey is darker than the black on the white which is grey

Just kidding, the grey effect is very clear in romms with lack of light control.

So, anyone said that they could analyse my mix?

PS I will try to get pictures...just have to steal the cam from my kids...

**Harpmaker** · **02-10-09, 04:51 PM**

Quote:

robert_1967 wrote:

Well, all I can say, it seems to work

Quote:

My sample board has cured 18 hours beside a very gentle heating element.

It has been my experience that it is best to wait at least 24 hours after painting a sample before judging the color of the paint. Sometimes the color change in this time is very little, but other times it can be huge. By "huge" I mean relatively; to the naked eye the color change might not even be detectable to the uneducated eye.

Quote:

Up on the wall it gently deepens the black but still gives "punch" in the white. I have not tuched the calibration. It is impossible to do that with such a small sample 0.5m x 0.8m. So for my naked eye it seemed that very bright scenes, every so littlte tilted to the blue but with basically the same brightness.

sounds great! The blueness you are seeing could actually be there. Most times when a silver paint is added to a white paint the resulting mix is a bit blue because of the silver (you can see charts of this in the C&S thread). That is why I gave you that NCS color to try - it should compensate for that blue push. You might be able to correct for this small "blue push" when you recalibrate your PJ, but I am a real believer in having as color-neutral a screen as possible.

Quote:

Up really really close to the screen with a bright picture you can see millions of tiny tiny flakes shining back at you

That is just the way it should be.

Quote:

The positive effect is more obvious if you let some stray light in. Then you clearly see that the black on the white is grey and the black on the grey is darker than the black on the white which is grey

Just kidding, the grey effect is very clear in romms with lack of light control.

C&S is not really an ambient light mix. it will perform better than a pure white screen, but is nowhere near as good as Black Widow for an ambient light screen.

Quote:

So, anyone said that they could analyse my mix?

Not a probem. You will be getting a PM soon.

Quote:

PS I will try to get pictures...just have to steal the cam from my kids...

Be sure to use a tripod or other steady position to take the photos; the exposures will probably be longer than you can take by just holding the camera in your hands and still get clear shots.

**robert_1967** · **02-11-09, 02:56 AM**

About curing, yes you are correct.

After fooling around yesterday the sample actually felt "damp" even though it was dry to the touch. I have again put it against our heating element in the kitchen again to let it cure 100% for a couple of days. The fact of the matter is that I applied the color with a paint brush. And I rushed the second layer after only 10 hours drying (without heat). So I have two thick layers that need curing.

On the “to do list” of the day, I am going to get my hands on a sample of ultra-flat white paint. I felt the gloss of the sample was “borderline” for me. Then I shall do a small sample mix to be analyzed.

Secondly I am going to get in touch with the engineers of the large suppliers in Sweden of Silver Paint. This to determine whether they use mica (iridescent) or aluminum. (my guess is that they do not use pure silver :-P)

**robert_1967** · **02-15-09, 05:49 AM**

Curing finished after several days close to a heating element of my house. Now it is really dry to the tuch.

Unfortunatelly the battery charger of the camera is misplaced. I will try to get another camera somehow.

In my opinion there is a viewing cone attached with this mix. Whith my flat pure white wall I get very close to a lambertian spread of reflection. But with the mix you have to sit down to increase the gain. Now if this is due to resulting exess in gloss or a result of the aluminum flakes or lastly due to the fact that I painted my sample with a paint brush, I do not know.

My problem is that we use our screen for games as well, and not to seldom standing up (guitar hero, and various wee-games). So I am afraid that I will loose gain standing up. Any way, I will shortly send a few samples for spectro-analysis.

**Harpmaker** · **02-15-09, 04:01 PM**

An undesirable viewing cone will result from too much gloss. The gloss could be coming from the base paint or the silver paint (but probably not from the reflective particles in the paint, which are almost certainly either coated mica or polyester). If brush marks are visible, they could be a contributing factor as well.

If mica flakes are coated heavily enough they will not refract light to any significant amount, but most mica-based silver paints are made with mica flakes that are designed to refract as well as reflect - we are trying to find one that is truly metallic (light reflection) with no visible iridescence (light refraction).

I'm looking forward to the samples.

**robert_1967** · **02-16-09, 06:13 PM**

I got your samples today. Thank you.

I will send you my tomorrow.

**Harpmaker** · **02-16-09, 08:18 PM**

Quote:

robert_1967 wrote:

I got your samples today. Thank you.

I will send you my tomorrow.

**robert_1967** · **02-18-09, 10:16 AM**

Samples are painted.

They are beeing dryed as we speak.

**robert_1967** · **02-28-09, 11:34 AM**

To Harpmaker ; custard ; mechman ; wbassett

Fantastic feedback on my mixes I sent. Can you post the diagrams on my thread?

I will buy another silver (with guaranteed aluminum) and another white base soon and send it to you.

**Harpmaker** · **02-28-09, 12:55 PM**

Quote:

robert_1967 wrote:

To Harpmaker ; custard ; mechman ; wbassett

Fantastic feedback on my mixes I sent. Can you post the diagrams on my thread?

I will buy another silver (with guaranteed aluminum) and another white base soon and send it to you.

Sure, I'll post them below.

The aluminum paint probably won't work for C&S, my guess is that it will darken the mix too much to make an N9, but it might be worth a try.

It should be noted that the silver paint ("Hobbylack") Robert used to make this C&S mix with is mica-based and shows a prismatic effect, the white paint it was added to completely masked any refraction so it could still be used.

Please note that the white paint has a gloss factor of 5, this turns out to still be too glossy and will hot-spot with the added silver paint.

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