[Heathkit] SB series cabinet paint

[kim.herron at sbcglobal.net]

Well Glen, all I know is that the info that I was given was that the cab 
color never changed.  I do live in Heath country up here.  The front 
panel color was different and changed as you say, three times.  The Cab 
color was "supposed" to be the color that I sited. I have seen several 
different cab colors just like you, but the correct color is what I 
stated.  If you have a Johnson transmitter from the mid fifties to early 
sixties, you see the same thing.  I won't tell you that the colors from 
certain suppliers weren't different, only that they weren't correct.  I 
suppose the QC people weren't real concerned about the color as much as 
other items
----- 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 6:01 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.
>
>
>