[Heathkit] SB series cabinet paint

[Glen Zook]

If so, then the color stability was extremely lousy even over the short term because I have seen various SB-Line units purchased new at the same time that came through with various colored cabinets!  Now the kits were probably not manufactured on the same day, maybe not even in the same week or even month.  But, the time frame did not encompass several years.  Also, the cabinets were not exposed to the sun before shipping (at least that I can determine).

Also, why the different front panel colors?  Again, units bought at the same time could come with any of 3 different shades of green on the front panel.

Now I believe that the color that came on the SB-104 (maybe they had stabilized the paint formula by then) is definitely the best looking of all of the various colors that I have seen (it is a light gray-green) and that is the color that I have had duplicated for use when I repaint SB-Line cabinets.  The Sherwin-Williams formula for that particular shade is posted in the article on my website.

Now the gray that was used on the DX-20, DX-35, and DX-40, as well as on part of the DX-100 cabinets is generally well within standards.  Now it can vary slightly due to batch mixing, but, overall, the colors have held up very well over the decades.  Also, the "Apache Green" paint used on the Mohawk, Apache, Warrior, Marauder, Seneca, SB-10, Comanche, Cheyenne, and several other units have again been pretty much the same.  Of course there are slight batch differences but the colors are well within what can be considered to be the same "range".  Those cabinets are pretty much the same color as they were when the units were new.  But the SB-Line is considerably different.  As I stated before I have seen at least 5 completely different colors on those cabinets ranging from a very "pleasant" color like on the SB-104 to some pretty "putrid" shades of green.  Frankly, I have never seen such widely varying colors on radios manufactured by other companies.  It
 is hard to believe that Heath used such lousy paint on the SB-Line equipment, but such is definitely possible.

Glen, K9STH

Website:  http://k9sth.com


--- On Fri, 6/27/08, kim.herron at sbcglobal.net <kim.herron at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

You're right in that you've seen more than one color on Heath Cabinets.  What you don't realized is that they've changed color because of exposure to sun, etc as well as other factors.  The original color did not change but the chemical stability of the paint used from the early sixties to the late 70's did.