In California anyway, I don't think it makes sense to try to use color
codes anymore. The old codes were for lacquer, and California has
legislated that the only paints that can be used are water-based urethanes.
I don't think you can expect two very different formulations of paint to
cross-reference to each other. I'm having my alpine repainted, and their
matching to a piece of metal under the hood that hasn't been exposed to the
elements for 30 years. They showed me a test today and the match is pretty
close. The urethane has a different luster to it (more depth and
shiny-ness) than the patch under the hood, and it's hard to know how much
of that is because the paint under the hood is lacquer, and how much is
because the paint under the hood is 30 years old. My intuition is that
you'll be happier with a "physical" match performed by a skilled paint
mixer than with a "by-the-numbers" matched done blindly with old codes.
=============================================================
Daniel J. Levitin, M.S., Ph.D. .
Cognitive Science & Human Factors
Interval Research Corp. levitin(at)interval.com
1801-C Page Mill Road Phone: 415/842-6236
Palo Alto, CA 94304 FAX: 415/354-0872
=============================================================
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Sep 05 2000 - 09:28:08 CDT