Grass Flock Applicator

[JR 500系]

Never realise there is actually such a tool! Seems pretty neat!

 

 

Does it use static? strange the folliage sticks right in! I can see several uses especially for mountains and forrests, or those hard to re-create grass growing out of rock faces!

[cteno4]

I’ve seen these popping up the last 6 months or so.

 

Yes it’s like the hand held static grass applicators. Basically the plate under the paper with glue is statically charged and the grass gets sucked up onto the glue. Nice thing this way is it’s all upside down so when grass fibers hit the glue they stay upright. When you do it dropping the grass down onto the glue on the layout (that is grounded to the applicator to make the static potential between the applicator and glue) the fibers can lean over some due to gravity.

 

the box static applicator can only make tufts and mattes that you then peel off and apply to the layout. but for making tufts it’s nice and clean and easy to cleanup and retrieve unstuck grass for reuse.
 

The hand held ones you can drop grass anywhere on the layout, but it can be messy cleaning up the excess grass that may not hit the glue…

 

Jeff

[Tony Galiani]

I have had mixed results with my hand held model - though I suppose more practice could help.  One thing that put me off the hand held model was that - despite thinking I had discharged it properly - I still managed to get a shock putting it away.  Need to review the manual again as I thought I was handling it safely but apparently not.

Ciao,

Tony

[cteno4]

Yes they are fiddly beasts. I have an older one that either works well or totally fails! It was a cheap one. I just picked up a second a couple of months back but have not gotten around to testing it out. Way back I built one and it worked pretty well but the fly transformer went pop! I think I may have been running it with too much voltage. Static flocking is an art and takes practice and experimenting.

 

yes when you finish flocking, turn it off and then ground the alligator clip to the mesh. Might be a little spark. You can do it a second time a little later to drain any static charge still left. These things put out a very high voltage zap that might sting but won’t really hurt you. About the level of a good winter sock on carpet rubbing zapping of a sibling!

 

jeff

[Jimbo]

I've been looking at these. not sure what to think about them or the homemade ones??

[cteno4]

Home made static grass flickers can work pretty well. You either buy a fly transformer (it take 9v and puts it to a few thousand volts to create the static charge) or tear apart one of those static zap fly swatters that have 2 meshes that are charged and when the bug hits and and cross over the two grids the get statically zapped. I built one like 20 years ago and it worked well, but I burned it out at 12v (it was rated at 15v) and I found out later you have to run them much lower than rated on the cheap transformers. They are now down to like $15 on Aliexpress.

 

chambers and plates are a newer add on to flickers. These were driven by war gammers that wanted a lot of small tufts of grasses to plop on their temp scenery bits and model rr folks started liking them a lot as well.

 

only issue with N scale is that the smallest grass you can usually get is 3mm (2mm is rarer) and so it’s not a low grass. The shorter fibers also don’t always end up vertically on a drop applicator as I think any air movement is enough to make them stray from vertical some. These plate flockers seem to make the grass jump better from the videos I’ve seen, but again is for making bits you then transfer to the layout, not for use directly on the layout. The lasercut housing is just to make things nearer as you can use a drop flocker like a plate flocker, but grass end up all over and it being statically charged more of a pain to clean up (ever sanded or sawed styrene foam and all the foam dust/particles gets statically charged and sticks to everything!).

 

jeff

[Jimbo]

i was going to go with flocking but didnt want the extra expense  of a flocking tool ,  i did find some ground scatter scratch the color i liked, cool, so get it down sprayed glue to keep in place an it changed color! it darkened up,so now it looks like my mat i have on the table, that was interesting ha!

[cteno4]

You can now get very inexpensive ones (<$20) on ebay and aliexpress and I expect Amazon. 
 

jeff

[Jimbo]

thanks im still on the fence about one, sooo    i want to use the longer flock to give a field effect well thats my intentions any ways

[cteno4]

3-4mm static grass is like 18-24” grass, usual knee high field grass.
 

The static applicators take some practice and playing with, one of those tools that needs fiddling with to get good results. But it can do some spectacular stuff.

 

jeff

[beakaboy]

I am collecting material to make the static grass wand in the link supplied. A friend has been impressed with the accuracy of the one he built from the instructions.     https://marksmodelworks.wordpress.com/downloads/