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Black Widow, The German experience (for beginners).

17K views 10 replies 6 participants last post by  Harpmaker 
#1 ·
This is my experience on trying to paint a screen. I am far from an expert on both home cinema and at being a painter so I intend to keep this as non technical as possible. I also intend as much as possible to only give the facts of my experience.

The results: my post would not be possible without the help of this forum and especially Harpmaker who did the tests you see below. Thank you very much.

First I see so often people asking the question what are people doing with this paint what is it all about. The research and testing into a process named Black Widow Ultra is about getting the right paint or paint mix that is as neutral in color as possible. As far as I understand if the paint is not neutral then it will affect for example the colors you will see when your projector shines on it.

The second major idea is to get a tone of grey that works for your projector and room. This is totally dependent on your own set of facts and in the end your personal opinion. In my case I wanted something pretty light in tone. I think my projector (a Panasonic PT-AT6000) is fairly bright but you need to decide or work this out by reference to your projectors abilities, the type of room (totally dark or a living room with ambient light and white walls) and size of your screen. You really need to research this yourself. You will find these kinds of questions in this forum.

Usually in this forum you are going to see tone values with a “N” and told to buy a neutral grey with this tone. N10 is white and N3 pretty black. I personally choose something around the N8 – N9 values. Once you have this N value you can go to this thread here - Link to the color code thread. and choose a color code which as close as possible matches this N value.

Here in Europe of course we have different paints and not all the codes in the above post work the same here. So here is my experience on ordering this paint here in Germany.

Hornbach - The guy at Hornbach was really nice and interested in what I was doing. I said I wanted a Matt paint with the RAL color 7038. I came back later and was given my paint. He had mixed up a paint with my color but it was with a Satin base. I told him I specifically wanted a matt to which he said this is almost the same and in any case they don’t sell Matt anymore at all. Thankfully a manager came who thought that a Satin paint was not the same as a matt and agreed that I did not have to take the paint. So Hornbach or at least Hornback Munich might not be the first choice of places to go.

Next I tried Toom. He said he could not mix the paint. Not sure why exactly but he said his mixer could not do it. I have a feeling that he did not like the RAL or NCS color codes and just wanted to work with the color he had in front of him.

Next I tried Bauhaus. They use SwingColor and you can get a Latex Matt. I first asked for RAL 7038 which they rightly said was Achatgrau. You can see on the label how they named it. 2.5l is the smallest you can buy and it costs 19.95€. In my personal "expert" opinion this paint was too dark.

This is the paint container.


This is the label they put on the top.


The tests of this paint mix is below.

I will quote from Harpmaker who did a sample test of the paint.

RAL 7038

While this paint is N7.1 in shade it is quite far from a true neutral and it pushes yellow-green. I don't know if this can be compensated for by PJ calibration


Note: The linked thread above puts RAL 7038 at around N 7.9, but the above indicates it was darker than that. Thus I would not suggest you try this paint color.

So I then went back to Bauhause and this time tried an NCS color. S1000-N. The label they gave you can see below. The label got cut off a little, but just aksing for S1000-N was not enough, the “NCS Edition 2” seemed to be important too.

The label;


The opinion of Harpmaker on this paint is

S-1000-N NCS Edition 2

This paint is N8.8 and not quite as neutral as we would like, but it would still be usable as a screen after the PJ is calibrated to it.


Note the above linked thread of color codes indicates N8.9 and the test shows an N8.8 so this is pretty close.

I put two coats of this on my wall (without adding anything to it) and I was happy with it.
I had however bought the Auto Air Aluminum Fine (AAA) and thus thought I would try this, so I added the AAA (120ml) in the proportions you can read about in this forum of 4:1. This means 4 parts paint to 1 part AAA.

You can get it from Amazon.de and they have just reduced their price to 11.11€. I paid more than this when I bought it.
Amazon Auto Air Aluminum Fine

Here is how it looks. I am not sure if this helps anyone but here is the screen.



This was also tested by Harpmaker and he found the following.

S-1000-N NCS Edition 2 with AAA Fine
“It is within our neutrality requirements, but something that concerns me is that I don't think I can see any reflective aluminum even under 10X magnification. The true test would be to have the sample under direct illumination as opposed to just room light.”


The jury is still out on the reflective aluminum as I will need to look at this more closely.
At this stage I have my wall painted with this mix of NCS Color S1000-N (4 parts) and Auto Air Aluminum fine (1 part).

I also wanted to put a set of dumb instructions on how I rolled the wall.

In preparation I took a small palm sander and sanded the wall. This basically sanded the 30 years of paint on the wall which was very rough. I did this twice. The second time I used 400 grit to get it nice and smooth.

Some people might shudder at how I did this but here goes step by step.

1. I got a bottle with a wide top and used it to actually mix my paint. I marked where 480ml was on it with water first. I then poured the paint mix into this bottle.

2. I poured in the 120ml bottle of Auto Air.

3. I then poured 40ml of water into the Auto Air bottle to get every little but of that paint out and then poured that into the big bottle as well.

4. I shook this bottle to make sure I had a good mix. There is a small ball in the Auto Air which I let go into the big bottle to help with the mixing.

5. I then poured half of the contents into my roller thingy.

6. I used a small roller. I know this is not the normal size but it has a really nice roller on it with very short hairs. It is not long and it does not leave much of a ripple effect like other rollers do. In the German Bauhäuser I could only find either long haired rollers or foam ones and everyone says do not use foam, so I stuck with the small roller I had.


7. The water added also helps to thin out the paint and help with making it even and lessen the ripple effect of the roller. I actually did put on this paint without adding water and it left more of a ripple effect and also lines where I had painted. I found that if it was thinned out it left a smoother finish.

8. I then roll it on very lightly and as quickly as possible. Trying all the time to make sure you cannot see the lines or marks of where you last rolled.

9. Something that I read in a German forum was that after you have finished wash you roller fully in water and get as much water out of it. Then go back to your screen and just lightly without any pressure roll over your whole screen while it is still partly wet. I think and believe this helps with getting rid of any roller marks. I did not put any pressure on the roller, and all you see is that the wall become a little wetter again.

If you are doing this in Germany then you will have 2.5l of the paint (without the AAA) so you have more than enough to have a test roll. In fact try it without the Auto Air and also turn on your projector, you might be happy with the result and not need the auto air at all.

If you feel that the screen without AAA is too dark and you need a slight lift then this could be one reason to use a mix of AAA.

That is it for now.
 

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#3 ·
That RAL 7038 you got is really off-color, so much so that I would ask the store to replace it with some paint that was closer to the designated color. To show how bad your batch is I ran the values through a Delta E program I have. The designated values for RAL 7038 are on the left and the actual color you got is on the right. The color squares represent the colors for the values above the square.

Four Delta E values are given in the bottom right of the picture, the one most used is still CIE 1976 and that value is 9.71; any value greater that 1.0 can be detected by most people.

 
#5 ·
That RAL 7038 you got is really off-color, so much so that I would ask the store to replace it with some paint that was closer to the designated color.
Ahhhh I was hoping you said that about 2 weeks ago. I had the feeling that the paint was wrong but had no expert opinion to be able to argue as such in the shop. I threw it out as it was not worth keeping.


For the ''German experience'' i would recommend also Caparol's Grau 15 and Grau 20 as a base, which are extremely neutral. I believe Caparol is a German firm, so, easy to find.:)
Hi Mate. Have you tested this? When I search for this I do find that it exists but I could never actually find a place even online that sold Caparol Grau 15 for example.

What I would like to suggest for the thread is that we suggest paints with a photo and test results to both help people and add something (even though we are not in the US) to the BWU thing.
 
#7 ·
Hi darbid,

Great posts so far!

I'm about to make a Black Widow myself and I'm living in Germany, too. Seems like NCS colors work a lot better than RAL ones... Could you please upload some pictures of a movie shot against your newly coloured wall? It would be great to see how this color mix works in action.

Best,

Paul

PS: I could't find Caparol Grau anywhere as well...
 
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