Hi there

Eduard have sent us sheets of their new 1:48 5-colour lozenge decals - seen here compared against the SSW D.III items that got such a savaging. The full story behind the "faded" look of the earlier decals may never be revealed, but these seem a dramatic improvement to my eyes:



All the best

Rowan

Hi Rowan


I would say your eye's are correct on that they are an improvement over the kit lozenge . They aren't actually all that bad . Colours might be questionable , close to being with the current leading lozenge decals , just quit not there . Which actual surprise me with the amount of info currently out there .


Cheers


Terri

On the new 1/48 Eduard lozenge pattern, the chord looks stretched but the strips look too short. The originally five color pattern factory edge to factory edge width is 4' 6" to 4' 10". (check to see if these bolts scale down to that.) In Millimeters the full sized five color fabric was 1350mm plus or minus 10mm wide. This amounted to about six panels in most cases for a top wing on a single seat inline aircraft. Most of the colors are close the mid blue color is wrong its more of a purple. Look at the Aviattic decals Factory Fresh sets to be exact.

The distorted pattern is exactly what Eduard did for the SSW D.III undersurface of the top wing section. It shows one continuous run of lozenge span wise. They seemed to have stretched the pattern to fit the wing leading edge to trailing edge..

WWI A/C are out of my labor grade but if one were to seek "perfect" decals for this kit the vendor is: Aviattic? Frustrating that their website is inoperable. In such case would the modeler have to measure and cut the correct patterns from a sheet?

I'm sure the folks making the real items would be amazed at the interest in all this a century later, though I'm not!

Yep. I see a beauty built up with their product on the site. Extraordinary!

Please... Let me throw a wrinkle into this lovely argument. I believe that most of the dyes used in the manufacture/printing of the lozenge fabric were vegetable dyes. In the summer sun (so to say) just how long would it take to turn those glorious rich colors into the faded pale colors?

Perhaps we should be as bold as to say - both colors are OKAY.

I paint my PC10 brown, no olive in it and no one seems to notice.

Then again this is a SSW fighter at the end of the war, How watered down was the dye, when applied?

Think about it, before you point the Finger of Wrongness.

Enjoy
Captn Tommy

Vegetable based dyes. In the middle of the industrial revolution? Here is a bit of info.

". . .The Genesis of the German Dye Industry in the Nineteenth Century

Advances in organic chemistry in the 19th century prompted a revolution in German industry. Until the middle of the century the expanding textiles industry had used natural dyestuffs. While England and France were able to draw the required raw materials from their colonial empires, Germany was largely forced to rely on imports.

The first artificial dye, mauveine, was developed by William Henry Perkin in 1856. The basic product for refining artificial dyes was aniline, which is derived from black coal. Coal tar, until then a waste product, was discovered to contain the aniline that could be used in producing coal-tar dyes. This led to a gradual liberation from natural raw materials and, in Germany, to the concerted building of aniline factories and the development of artificial dyestuffs.

The first aniline plant, the Anilinfabrik was built in Ehrenfeld (Cologne) by Joseph Wilhelm Weiler in 1861, after which a number of other new firms were founded. Three were started in 1863: OHG Friedrich Bayer et comp., Farbwerke Meister Lucius et Brüning in Höchst am Main (known as Farbwerke Hoechst after 1880) and Kalle & Co AG in Biebrich. 1865 saw the start of BASF (Badische Anilin und Sodafabrik AG) in Ludwigshafen, followed in 1873 by Agfa in Berlin and also Casella, the aniline factory of Gans and Leonhardt, in Frankfurt-Fechenheim. German research in chemistry underwent enormous progress during this period, and the industry boomed. By 1877, Germany accounted for half of world dyestuff production. By the end of the century, nearly all new dyestuffs were being invented by German coal-tar dye companies.

The dyes themselves were only an end product. The aniline dye industry produced other materials such as sulfuric acid, which could be used in the production of fertilizers; and also the chlorine gas that would be used as a chemical weapon during the First World War. Many of the products that the aniline dye factories produced had dual uses, both for the private civilian economy and for the military. Besides dyestuffs, products for civilian use included cosmetics, fertilizers, pesticides, and medicines, as well as an increasing number of chemical products for the film and photo industries.

In the years 1908 to 1912, Fritz Haber (Professor for Chemistry at the Technical College of Karlsruhe and a contractual consultant to BASF) and Carl Bosch of BASF collaborated in developing a process for synthesizing ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen under high pressures, known as the Haber-Bosch process. This enabled industrial-scale production of ammonia, which began in 1913 in Oppau at a plant near the main BASF factory in Ludwigshafen. The high-pressure chemicals industry grew especially important because ammonia was vital in the creation of nitrate fertilizers as well as (when oxidized into saltpeter) in the making of explosives.

The German chemical industry was heavily oriented to export and sought to achieve a monopoly position on the world market, establishing many branches abroad and seeking to exploit international patent law. Since the dyestuff industry was very capital intensive and involved costs beyond the means of small firms, the market soon came to be dominated by a few large corporations. By the start of the 20th century, six companies led the market in both Germany and the world in the production and sale of synthetic dyes: BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, Agfa, Cassella and Kalle AG.. . ."

The study of coal tar products that transformed the world of dye-making was spearheaded by August Wilhelm Hofmann an assistant of Liebig. During the early 1840s, Hofmann demonstrated the identity of a basic compound obtained from various sources, including indigo and coal tar. It was soon named aniline from anil, the Arabic for indigo. After 1845 Hofmann and others prepared this aromatic amino compound in two steps from the coal tar hydrocarbon benzene. There were other coal tar hydrocarbons, such as toluene, naphthalene and anthracene. These were studied because their amino compounds appeared to be related to the alkaloids, above all the important drug quinine.

Below is a copy of the patent Awarded to William Henry Perkin for Synthetic Dye Discovery in 1856. Edelstein Collection, Hebrew University.


Synthetic dyes began proliferating in Europe in high gear 70 years before WWI. Britain, Franch, Germany and others had massive synthetic dye industries at the war's onset.

The German lozenge fabric dyes were not vegetable based.

Well I am truly corrected.

Thank you, this is very interesting. And illuminating. Feeling very embarrassed at my lack of knowledge, I still wonder if the fading would result in a lighter color approaching the afore mentioned decals? (If the plane lasted that long in operation.)
I had an American flag that was rather expensive and over a summer in the sun 2-3 months became pink white and light blue. And then a purple table cloth that became a lovely Mauve in the summer sun, I do not know the origins of the dyes. Never Assume!

JackFlash, you are good.

Thanks
Captn Tommy

No worries. On the fading there obviously was a clear dope and even a tinted dope and later even further extra varnishing that was applied to the wing / flying surface fabric covers. Eagle Strike's attempt gave us what we use to call the "Very Dark" variations. Microsculpt gave us the factory fresh colors. Several other newer companies like HGW and Wood & Wire / Old Propeller have given us a subdued "fabric" texture to the real colors. But tip of the top and the ones with the most plausible look in my mind are the current items put out by HGW & Aviattic. Aviattic provides "factory fresh" and "faded" versions. These come in translucent (for your own base color) and white backed. (HGW does the same thing with the backings by the way.)

The most telling reason for the variations is stress and the weather. The quick degredation of the cotton fabric colors was due in my opinion to operational service time. On a wing that was aleady sealed small fractures showed up in the doped / varnished surface. The studies of that fine artist Mark Miller are some of the best visual references on the subject. Remember also that the the Germans Calendered this fabric, (that is to run the bolt through steam heated press rollers. And flatten the crossections of the weave threads.)

Hi Tom

Yep - from my old art-school studies, I totally concur with Stephen on the use of synthetic dyes by that period.

But I equally share your doubts over the "absolute" matches that we, as modellers, like to cling to when replicating colours.

The real eye-opener for me was Luftwaffe WW2 paints (RAF colours too, later, when I took the restoration course as a volunteer at the RAF Museum); the closer you study the subject, the harder it is to pin precise values to what had been assumed to be hard-and-fast colours. When original German paint manufacturers replicated their wartime formulae (as closely as possible within modern restraints), the results were strikingly different. Unsettling or comforting, depend on your point of view!

Wind that back 20+ years to when, presumably, standards may, if anything, have been more lenient - and my doubts over "absolute" colour value grow deeper. Add to that the vagaries of pigment quality and supply - and you've got a real conundrum. Then, as you and Stephen both say, there's weathering to take into account.

Stephen - have German WW1 dye suppliers been identified and their output compared? I'm presuming there wasn't only one? - and from what I've been taught of German and British WW2 production, I'd risk a bet their output doesn't match precisely.

There'll probably never be a definitive answer, but it's topics like this that makes modelling so fascinating.

All the best

Rowan

Which is why I always tell die Farbenpoleizi to take a hike whenever they start pontificating.

Love the spirited discussion on lozenge! But I'll stay out of the historical deep end

From artist perspective, I would prefer "factory fresh" to "overly faded" - you can always tone down / bleach out color while it's almost impossible to bring vibrance back in.

That said, I do like Aviatik's faded lozenge, as it still carries faded resemblance of the original colors - planning to try out a set soon.

First. we are discussing dyes from WWI, not paint chips from WWII. But to help you in your research here is a place to start. About 10 of these 141 companies were in operation during WWI. It would seem someone has been doing this comparison stuff for a few years. Not to blow my own horn. But don't take my word for it. Check it out for yourself.

http://manufacturer.fibre2fashion.com/dyes/country/Germany/index.html

Also here is nice bit of research on how Dupont "acquired" dye formulas from info scavanged from German WWI dye sources.

Spies & dyes

Hi Stephen

That's fantastic info, and many thanks - I knew I could rely on you to come up with the goods.




That's exactly my point - thank you for underlining it. With correspondingly less developed production tolerances, I think WW1 German pigment manufacturers would have struggled even more to maintain a uniformity that they failed to achieve 20 years later. And with 10 (or more) dye producers, all facing wartime demands and shortages - it really indicates (in my mind at least) the likelihood of more variance between batches, and hence the need for extreme caution in declaring "absolute" right and wrongs.

When I undertook the RAF Museum maintenance course, we were taught that it was common practice to literally mix batches of aircraft dope in a bucket during WW1 - so I have no reason to assume that dye manufacturing precision was much tighter... When I was a broadcast video editor, corners were often cut with a "it's good enough for TV" attitude (of course, I never did it! LOL!) - so I'd be surprised if a "near enough" type of quality control wasn't also the order of the day as often as not during WW1 when it came to colour precision.

But, as I said before, I really doubt that we'll ever know for sure. I'm not a betting man, but I reckon my wager would be safe. Anyway - I'll jump off the pinhead to let others carry on dancing if they wish.

All the best

Rowan