[Heathkit] SB series cabinet paint

[Bob Macklin]

When the Pennsylvania Railroad painted their locomotives "Brunswick Green"
each unit painted was different.

The formula for "Brunswick Green was ONE gallon of black and ONE handful of
chrome yellow.

Bob Macklin
K5MYJ
Seattle, Wa,
"Real Radios Glow in the Dark"
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Glen Zook" <gzook at yahoo.com>
To: "Dennis Petrich" <radioart at charter.net>; <heathkit at mailman.qth.net>;
<kim.herron at sbcglobal.net>
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2008 3:01 PM
Subject: Re: [Heathkit] SB series cabinet paint


> 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.
>
>
>
>