Lead Tin Yellow is still creating lead soap inclusions in paint films

Aug 28, 2023

Lead Tin Yellow is still creating lead soap inclusions in paint films and no one has a solution. Except me. HA! Seriously, it's a large problem because the inclusions can actually break through the paint film like a teenager's acne. 

Problem:
Regarding the creation of lead soap inclusions:
1. This seems to happen with LTY type I. Type II contains silica and I haven’t seen it mentioned as causing lead salts.
2. Carbon dioxide may be a causal factor.
3. Formation of lead salts is not understood fully.
4. Harding lists LTY as being Type 1, the problematic one.

Solution:
* The MH Lead Tin Yellows, Lemon and Light, are very close to each other. LTY Lemon equates to Munsell 7.5Y 9/6, the highest chroma possible for that hue at that value.
* The MH LTY Light equates to 10Y 9.2/3. This makes sense because they'd need to add some white to raise the value to 9.2, and that would cause a loss of chroma.
*Important takeaway: You can mix these colors easily with the attached pdf chart. The colors in it are 100% accurate to the Munsell standard. What may not be as accurate are the images I downloaded from Harding's site. But they're probably not far off.
The PDF is attached here for download. It's free to anyone reading here.

Instructions on use:
Download the PDF to your phone. 
Put it in whichever app you use to view PDFs. 
Open the PDF on your phone and place your phone as close as possible to your paint mix. 

There’s a very simple skill that we all possess. We are very good at judging color differences if we do three things:
• Place the target color close to our paint mix.
• Refrain from turning away or looking at anything else
• Trust that our brain’s visual system is giving us correct information.

#3 is the hardest one to do consistently, in part because we don’t grow up with an understanding of what color components look like (so knowing what we are seeing takes some getting used to) and we need to have the vocabulary to describe those components now and in the future.

Viola! An alternative to using Lead Tin Yellows. Download the Munsell PDF here. Download the research here

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