Hi Jeff; I think the horror stories you are hearing about Floquil pre-date the Testor take-over. Since the 1980s Floquil varied greatly in color, with (as an example) their Pullman green having evolved from a rich brown-olive color at the start to a medium green, lighter than their original coach green and with hardly any olive tone at all. I have heard that they lost or choose to ignore their drift cards, and simply compared each batch to the last batch made and declared it good enough.
The colors I've seen since the Testor takeover have returned to something close to the original hue, and have been stable. That said, I haven't bought any in a year or more, so something could have changed. Pieter E. Roos --- On Thu, 4/5/12, Jeff Smith <[email protected]> wrote: From: Jeff Smith <[email protected]> Subject: RE: {S-Scale List} Paints & airbrushes To: [email protected] Date: Thursday, April 5, 2012, 3:01 PM I know both the owners of Start Brands and Tru-Color. On the Star Brands be sure to use their thinner, if you do not you risk destroying a plastic car or engine. Start Brand is what PBL (Sn3 manufacture) uses to custom paint engines and cars. They have some interesting colors that are not available elsewhere. Colors such as Weathered Gray Wood, Seasoned Brown Wood, Natural Wood, and Faded Boxcar Red. These do have to be thinned to be airbrushed. On Tru-Color, it should be able to be airbrushed directly from the bottle. I have many customers that use it and some use it straight, some add enough thinner to a new bottle to bring the level to the top of the bottle and some thin it 25%-30%. I have heard horror stories about Floquil since Testors bought them. I am told by customers that the shade can vary between batches of paint. This should not happen when proper controls are in place at the factory. Testors makes a lot of paint and I am sure that the model RR paints are a very small portion of it. Jeff SmithRailMaster Hobbies Inc9815 Walnut St #106Bellflower, CA 90706(562) 867-5627www.railmasterhobbies.comwww.facebook.com/railmasterhobbies
