What the hell is wrong with Tamiya and their acrylic paints?!... A couple of years ago Tamiya changed some of their colors including many modelers' favorite XF-62 Olive Drab. It was no longer old brownish OD we know and love - instead it got much deeper dark green tone with no brownish tint... But later it seemed that they returned to the original formula, as the fresh jar of XF-62 I bought a year or so ago was once again nice familiar OD with slight brownish tone.

A couple of days ago I bought two new jars (larger 23ml variety) of XF-62 and... a BIG surprise... Once again the color is different from the old one, but very different from the previous bad greenish color too! Now the "new" XF-62 OD is lighter dull green color. I wouldn't call it OD at all... I checked with my FS fan deck and the new color is quite good match to FS 34083 known as Lusterless Forest Green or Air Force Forest Green. It seems to be quite useful color for various modern military equipment, BUT IT IS NOT the OLIVE DRAB I NEED!!!

Take a look at the photo below: classic OD in lower right, bad dark green OD in lower left and new "forest green OD" on top. Of course the photo does not show the colors properly, but you can clearly see difference in tone.

Pawel,

You didn't realize that you picked up Tamiya's new line of Braille Scale paints with "scale-effect built-in".

I personally haven't used much Tamiya paints yet, but still this surprises me considering Tamiya's reputation.

I pre and post shade enough and there are enough variables, that I only need a similar shade for any paint I apply to a vehicle. MM is the worst OD I have encountered(though it may be for 60's-70's US Army).

It is not similar. That's the whole point. Unless you consider anything "green" similar.

I ran into a similar problem with their "field grey" (XF65) a couple years ago. I bought 2 bottles (1 acrylic, 1 enamel) and found two totally different colors. The acrylic was a good representation of the color, but the enamel was more of a Russian green. Never bought another bottle of their paint since.

This actually is quite common. Very often acrylic and enamels from the same manufacturers are different colors. Model Master are also like that, so are many Gunze colors.

The real problem is having three jars of the same acrylic XF-62 paint and each having a different color...

When you buy house paint they recommend that you get several 5 gallon buckets and pour the paint from the cans into the buckets , mix it up and put it back into the cans. That way all the paint will match.

Yes, because there are almost always very small differences in shade between production batches of paint. This is normal.

Here we have completely different color: forest green instead of proper olive drab. No mixing is going to fix that...

It is particularly annoying, as it means that all the paint conversion tables and paint color mixes based on XF-62 paint are now useless. For example Steve Zaloga recommended XF-62 lightened with XF-60 Dark Yellow for WW2 US Army Olive Drab color. This is the mix I always used too. Now with this new "forest green" XF-62 color, this mix is useless, as the resulting color looks NOTHING like WW2 OD

Are both your new bottles the same? We need to establish whether yours is just a bad batch, or whether there is genuinely a global change of formula. I haven't bought any lately, so cannot offer any independent evidence.

Yes, they are both identical.

Today I ordered two more jars of XF-62, but small 10ml ones this time. Last time I bought small jar of this paint, it was in proper color. I'm very curious whether those ordered jars will be the same as the new color, or (hopefully) the old good one...

Had to do the same thing when painting the ship back in my Navy days. That haze grey (or deck grey depending on what surface your were painting) had to all match up an look uniform. It wasn't to make sure we where camouflaged correctly but the officer corp would get their panties all wound up if the color did not look uniform. Oh the gallons of paint we mixed to get that one area to look right.

Semper Fi ---> Mardet

Cheers

I just saw a post the other day on facebook about some Tamiya paints that were miss labeled. Its possible that what you really have is XF-51 Khaki green with an XF-62 label. It might be worth looking to see if your new paint matches the XF-51 or similar green.

If true, then its one real bummer!

FWIW my observation with their German Grey is that their rattle can has a lighter color compared to the one in the small bottle.

Cheers

Life Color UA 220 Olive Drab 319

Photo for discussion only.

Life Color has a few different shades, both darker and lighter.

Glad Im not alone with this.
Thought it was my imagination or not mixing well enough.
The last XF-62 I boughtwas noticeably a lighter green.

Tom