I am soon attempting to paint an IR lens and want to mix my own Vallejo color.

How can I go about turning a normal Vallejo color mix into a transparent paint to airbrush?

Thanks!

Generally I use semi-gloss black for an IR lens. If you want to make a transparent color, mix a small amount of paint with Vallejo Glaze Medium.

Even easier mix Klear floor polish with food colouring.

Gotcha, thanks.

So why solid black? Sure there was some level of transparency, no?

You beat me to that uber-great solution! And with 4 food colors, you can make any color and intensity you want, pretty much!

So, for folks wanting greenish periscopes and modern bullet-proof vehicle windows while using those clear parts... a light coat of green-tinted Future (Klear) does wonders while preserving the transparency. Want a slightly yellow headlight bulb? Alum foil or any "silvery" paint into the cavity, and fill with lightly-tinted Future. (Modern car modelers might want to try other colors - greenish and bluish tints - for some of the modern headlamps!)

And if you want to try out some pooled dirty water on a tank-fender or something... here's where adding a small amount of acrylic paint to the Future / Klear can get both the desired color and some depth and translucent character! It may be worth playing around with!...

Cheers!

Bob

When I started out as a driver in the Mech Infantry, I thought so too. When no one was watching, I looked at the IR lights hard and sometimes when the sun hit them just right, I thought I saw the darkest red, but no transparency. The thing that hangs you up is the word red. But honestly , they look black. You can put a layer of transparent red over the black, to give it that tint, but it's very hard to see anything on the real lens.

Thanks, Matt. Yeah, I was actually going to go for a dark purple, based on some other reading I'd done.

I may take some artistic liberties here, in order to show off the cool spotlight interior, but no red

As above re IR colours being 'semi-gloss black'

Don't try to use Vallejo to tint Future or Varnish, the VJ doesn't thin that far.

I use Future with food colouring, or Tamiya do transparents, 'smoke' as well as red/yellow/orange (+green?) much more amenable to mixing/tinting.

Jake,

I saw your post in the Armor forum and it just occurred to me - what is this IR lens attached to? I can only give eyewitness experience to stuff after I enlisted in 1982. German WWII is a different matter. The Germans experimented with different wavelengths and lens colors were different. I can't give you anything off the top of my head on German WWII IR but some research might be in order, and deep purple might be appropriate(the color, not the band)!

IF the real subject here is about the German IR night-vision device used on some Panthers and some SdKfz 250 tracks late in WWII...

This was an "active-IR" / Near-IR device consisting of an IR searchlight and an AEG - Leitz FG1250 "Bildwandler" ("BiWa") image-converter.

The IR searchlight (several sizes used) was a very high-powered tungsten-filament "conventional incandescent lamp" - a strong headlamp- with a deep-red glass IR filter-plate attached in front that allowed mostly light of ca 800 nm wavelength (near IR) to pass. This filter plate was deep red glass - so painting that searchlight lens would be very deep red (red-black or very very dark red transparent).

These lamps were rather inefficient IR sources and were pretty limited to perhaps 400 - 600m effective target illumination, and they consumed a LOT of power and got very hot during operation.

The BiWa unit (FG1250) was a near-IR receiver. If sufficient 800nm IR energy was reflected back from a target, it could effectively operate out to about 5-600m. The front lens appeared essentially black (glossy black, for painting). During operation, the BiWa generated an inverted "green" image on a small phosphor screen coupled to a low-power magnifier to provide a sight image. That eyepiece at the back end of the BiWa would of course appear black when not operating.

Cheers!

Bob

Matt - yes, working on German WWII infrared. Good cross-post catch!

Bob - great info, thanks!!