A story about the Curtiss R3C-2: back in the day, I recovered the tail feathers on the original in new fabric. I had a good sample of the old fabric that I could send to our usual vendor for color matching, so I phoned them to discuss the project. As soon as I said “metallic gold,” their response was uncharacteristically hesitant. They explained that metallic colors are hard to match and gold is the worst, but they’d try. After a few weeks, I called to ask how it was going, and they said “You’re not gonna be happy.” They were right. So I tackled mixing our own. Found a supplier of metallic gold pigments and they had a great match. We did mix our own, and it was miserable to work with. The pigment settled faster than you could believe, so it had to be thoroughly remixed every time I refilled my paint gun. Amazingly, it came out beautifully and was a perfect match.
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