Anyone Here Ever Use Oddballs Decals?

[Kisatchie]

I have a chance to buy a number of Oddballs Decals sets cheap, but I would like to find out if they are any good. I know Oddballs shut down a while back, leaving paying customers hanging. They were printed using an Alps printer, and I've heard good things about Alps-printed decals, so I'm thinking the decals will be okay.

Any comments?


Hmm... cheap decals for
cheap-o Kiz...

[GaryHinshaw]

I have a few of their sets and they are highly variable.  The black & white sets were quite good and crisp, but the sets with yellow (and maybe other colours) were pretty badly rendered with course half-tones:



So it depends.

[peteski]

Alps prints using a wax-like ink which is fragile (easily scratched) before it is clear-coated on the model.  Some "hotter" clear coats might also slightly dissolve the ink (although I have never experienced this problem). I use Testors dull and gloss cote.  Spraying few light layers helps by creating a clear barrier which protects the ink from wet clear coats applied later.

There are special printing techniques used on Alps which produce no coarse halftones in the image. But if they were printed like the ones Gary shows, the coarse halftone colors could be a problem.  But not all people find it objectionable when viewed wit a naked eye (not a magnified close-up).

[jmlaboda - RIP]

Tom Stolt, who has ran the company for many years, has recently hit the skids and have failed to reply to folks he owes refunds too.  Its a shame, really... he had some good stuff but why he has taken such a turn is hard to say... he even was forced from ownership of the Missouri Pacific list @ Yahoo! Groups because of problems that were reoccurring with the Group as well.

[peteski]

Tom used to be a mamber of Alps and alpsdecal Yahoo groups but I haven't seen him post there for a while.