Re: Appliques or Cammo Stencil Kits... Which Way To Go... (Was:Re: Primer)

[jlandry@domain.elided (John A. Landry)]

The aliens commander decided "Peter F. Ferris" <peter.ferris@domain.elided>
would make a perfect specimen for dissection, and he yelled...

>Do you (or anyone else on digest)  have any contact info for folks that
>offer these cammo stencil kits?

Peter,

While I can't help you with cammo "stencils", boy do I have vivid memories
of painting trucks camouflage in the Army!  When I arrived as a lower that
dirt E-1 private at my first duty station at Fort Sill, OK, my first job
was to help a newly arrived Sergeant paint every single truck in the motor
pool to camouflage.  This was in 1980 and the Army was still getting around
to converting over everything to camouflage from the original plain olive
drab.  In the case of the unit I was in (HHB 212th Field Artillery Brigade
for those who care), we had to convert over to the dark "forest green"
cammo pattern (as opposed to desert, etc.).  Even though Fort Sill is
closer to being a desert than a green forest, I suppose the paint scheme we
had to convert to had something to do with the fact we were deployable to
the forests of Germany to stop the Evil Empire(tm)... should the need arise
of course.  But I digress...

The way it worked for us was that we had a base color of flat forest green
paint and I think two other flat colors... black and loam.  There might
have been a third color, but I don't remember clearly.  We would first mask
off the truck and paint the base color.  Then using caulk, we would
*lightly* trace the camouflage pattern onto the truck using an Army FM
(Field Manual) as a reference.  This particular manual I remember had
examples of various trucks with the outlines of the patterns depicted in
black and white drawings.  The patterns were labeled according to shade
used and were generic to any color scheme (be it desert, forest, etc.).
After using the caulk, we would next adjust the spray gun to a smallish
round pattern and paint on the lightest shade schemes.  Next came the
medium color and lastly the darkest.  By the time were done painting 3
dozen trucks, we were quite good at it and hardly needed to use the paint
scheme reference.  

The important thing was not that the cammo scheme matched any reference
exactly, but that the natural lines and shades of the vehicle are broken up
in such a way as to make it *not* appear to be a vehicle at a distance
against a similar background.  It's really rather simple if you study
photographs of your truck and maybe sketch a pattern on paper first.  Such
a paint job could easily be handled by even a first time painter because
flat paint is very forgiving and does an excellent job hiding surface
defects.  Another nice benefit is that you hardly ever need to wash it and
it always looks like it's supposed to!

Go for it!

John L.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
jlandry AT halcyon DOT com      | 
Conservative Libertarian        |  "The road to  tyranny, we must never
Life Member of the NRA          |   forget, begins with the destruction
WA Arms Collectors              |   of the truth."
Commercial Helicopter - Inst.   |                     William J. Clinton
http://www.halcyon.com/jlandry/ |    10-15-95, speech at the Univ. of CT