Anyone have a Tamiya mix for rubber? I often paint road wheel rubber flat black but it’s obviously a tad too dark and clean looking. I’ve heard nato black works but I don’t have that color. I have black, all manner of greys, deck tan, buff and some muted yellow like dark yellow. I’m sure a nice rubber black can be made up from these but was curious if anyone had a preferred mix.
Flat black or German armor grey softened with flat brown - play with these till you find what you like .
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Hmm wouldn’t have though to soften with flat brown. I’ll give that a try
Why not use Tamiya Rubber, XF-85?
KL
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I can go buy it if I have too, just thought I’d see if someone had a good mix, I feel like o already have so many greys and off blacks something should be doable.
But if Tamiya rubber black is nice maybe I’ll have to pick it up
Great call, this was what was missing. In the past I tried to use buff or white but it came out too grey. With a bit of flat brown added the red in the brown added back some warmth that gave it a rubber tone
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I really like Rubber Black.
What color is it in reality? I know it sounds dumb lol. On my monitor it looks really close to flat black
I’m petty happy with the mix I got, used roughly 2 parts flat black to 1 part flat brown with a few drops of buff
Left and bottom are after spraying and right and top only primed
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I will try to do a test with those three colors (flat, nato and rubber) for you.
The mix you have does look good.
Thanks! I’m curious what nato and rubber black look like.
Thanks, I’m fairly happy with how it came out, it looks more grey in the picture than in person
Turns out I don’t have nato black. Might be able to get some on Wednesday.
Still going to try with flat and rubber. Hopefully it will turn out on camera.
Oh no worries don’t grab it just for the comparison. I’m even interested in what rubber black looks like. I’ve thought about buying it before but it looks like flat black on the website
I was going to get some anyway.
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I often mix up a dark grey, or put (almost) any other colour with the black, depending on how the model is to be depicted, and its local environment.
The treads can have very different tones and hues from the walls - darker treads are common in wet weather, both treads and tyre walls tend to be darker when it is very wet; in dusty conditions, colours can go either way.
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The two I have (AK RC and Vallejo) are a strange dark grey/green colour out of the bottle, but they dry to almost the same colour you’ve managed to mix up there, at least to my eyes.
I’d heard the brown thing before too and was also sceptical until I went out and looked at my own car tires the other day. They’re 4 years in and definitely have some brown tones developing in places.
I have been a huge fan of tamiya paint but I found this mig tire and rubber paint. I really feel they hit this color out of the park and will never mix paint for tires ever again.
I like Tamiya XF-85
This is just what I do so don’t shoot the messenger please:
(and I am very happy with the results!)
I use the “Model Masters - Gun Metal” paint that comes pre-thinned for the air brush but I manually brush it on over a base coat of Olive Drab.
I find this simulates the “off-black”, dark gray of rubber tires that appear to have been in use for awhile and also gives a hint of the slight “silvering” that older tires seem to take on.
In the photo immediately above these resin trailer tires have not yet
been given an over spray of Matte Clear to reduce the shine
and no weathering has yet to be applied.
.
Here seen are plastic road wheels with a base coat of dark yellow, then gun metal brushed on for the rubber. After which washes and lite weathering have been applied.
Please Note: The choice of the base color paint used under the gun metal will affect the intensity of the final “rubber” effect that is achieved.
Weathered Gun Metal “Rubber” Road Wheels. - An early Tamiya Stug model, built using their “rubber band” tracks.
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Would that be early war German rubber (real rubber), or late war German rubber (synthetic), or Russian rubber, US rubber, etc… 
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