The present invention relates to a paint-tinting method and to apparatus by means of which the method can be carried out, and more particularly to a method and an apparatus which will enable both the artisan and the hobby painter to achieve the correct nuance or hue of the paint with which painting is to be carried out, in a simple fashion.

The present invention will function irrespective of the type of paint involved, and can therefore be used equal¬ ly as well with different plastic paints and with dif¬ ferent oil-based paints, ranging from enamel paints to outdoor paints. When practicing this invention, the shading or tinting effected in order to obtain a colour of desired hue and nuance can be effected, similar to conventional colour tinting methods, on the basis of colour samples which have different hues and nuances and where the mixing conditions are given for such colours or paints. The conventional method, however, is ex¬ tremely complicated and requires the use of special equipment which only large paint stores and similar paint delivery merchants have the possibility of keeping available. The equipment used at present includes large tanks in which tinters, shaders or stainers are kept, hereinafter referred to solely as tinters, and the transference of tinter from said tanks to the base colour or paint is computer controlled.

The object of the present invention is to avoid the aforesaid problems and to provide simple apparatus and a simple method which can be readily carried to and ap¬ plied on the working site and which can be used to obtain desired hues and nuances without requiring spe¬ cial knowledge or the use of special machines. This

SUBSTITUTESHEET

object is achieved by means of a method and apparatus of the kind set forth in the Claims, which disclose the significant characteristic features of the invention.

The invention is fundamentally based on four colours, i.e. red, yellow, blue and black with white as a primary or base colour and also on the requirement that these tinters are, in themselves, paintable, i.e. they are drying paints. If desired, white can also be considered as a tinter and the other tinters can be considered as base colours, since all the colours or paints are paint¬ able. For instance, if a purely blue hue is required, the blue tinter is used as a normal paint. If a lighter hue is required, a white tinter is added, whereas a black tinter is added when a darker hue is required.

An essential feature of the invention is also that the tinters have a balanced strength or body, implying that a mixture or blend of mutually the same amounts of, e.g., yellow and blue will give a green colour. Those tinters used today do not have such body, and conse¬ quently colours such as blue will dominate. A corres¬ ponding mixture of blue and yellow with present-day tinters will result in a blue colour with a slightly changed nuance leaning towards green. It is precisely because of the different bodies of such tinters that the complicated apparatus is required at present for mixing different colours/paints together.

The tinting paints are suitably packed in readily- handled plastic bottles each fitted with a metering pump. As a result, tinter delivered by respective pumps will never be mixed with tinter delivered from another pump, until the tinters actually meet in the mixing vessel. One problem with many of the present-day machines is that tinters are mixed inadvertently at the

outlet of the mixing vessel and when this undesired mixture contains a dark colour or pigment, the colour tone obtained may be totally different to that desired. Irrespective of the size of the tinter containers used, the metering pumps will preferably be constructed to deliver a moderate quantity of tinter. This enables both small and large quantities of tinter to be mixed readily. A suitable quantity is 20 millilitres with each pump stroke.

If it is necessary to add 20 millilitres of one kind of tinter or another to a litre of primary or base paint, it will be seen that 40 millilitres is used with two litres of base paint, and so on. Correspondingly, with respect to mixtures of different tinting colours, these colours or paints will be directly proportional to one another and to the amount of base paint used. The desired nuance or hue can be obtained by mixing by hand, wherein a record is made of the quantities and tinters used in relation to the quantity of base paint used, so that the same blend can be obtained move readily on another occasion.

It will be understood, however, that it is a simple matter for anyone whomsoever in a shop and also on a working site to produce desired tinting of paint pig¬ ments. The equipment used is extremely simple and requires no investment worthy of mention. In other words, the aforesaid object of the invention has been fulfilled.