This link is to 6mm material from scenic express.Pat

http://www.sceneryexpress.com/prodin...number=SF00632

This is a link to a review of a Heki material 9.5mm tall.

http://www.armorama.com/modules.php?...=885&adsort=on

Thanks for the reply!

The 6mm static grass is so far the best bet.

The wildgrass mats are really nice for a lot of scenery situations, but for a uniform grass field they are a bit too irregular.

Coming to think about it, those *very* uniform "lawn" mats with the paper backing might do he trick. Woul never have tought that I seriously would consider those...

By the way, this is the field I am trying to model:

Hauk,

I would think that after a certain length, the fibers would clog in the machine rather than flow out.

A couple things to remember.

If you lay the fibers down on a flat base, you will get a uniform lawn look.

The more rough and craggy the base terrain, the more you get away from the manicured look of the finished static grass fibers.

You can also add the grass in layers, to get a more natural effect by laying down some shorter fibers, and when they have dried, add more thinned glue to that and go over them again.

I had a few pics of an experiment I did with the grass master, but I have misplaced them.

I did find these two, which show the layering a little.

First, short fibers from Woodland Scenics were applied.



Then, with some longer Noch fibers on top of those.



Varying the pattern of the glue on the second layer, will make the grass look different.

A dot of glue, will become a clump of grass and a larger smear of glue, will make it look like a taller patch of grass.

Vary the colors as well, dark on light, light on dark, and this will look like patches of tall grass growing withing the shorter stuff.

Adding ground up tiny twigs and pine needles to your ground base material, will add lumps and bumps to make the surface uneven as well and as I said before, the more you vary the base surface the more the finished surface will vary.

I have not tried it yet but I think using "Ground Goop" applied in lumps, bumps, ridges and smears would be perfect for this.

As always, practice and experiment before you use anything new on your layout or diorama.

That looks great Dave! I haven't tried static grass yet, but plan to on my new layout. While I think it looks great, one problem I've seen is that uniform look you seem to get, but your method eliminates that look and gives it a much more natural appearance! Very nice!!!

Has anyone tried applying this stuff with a flexible magnet wrapped around a shaker/applicator bottle? I recall reading somewhere years ago that wrapping a magnet around the bottle intensified the static charge and caused more fibers to stand up when they hit the wet glue or paint. I haven't tried it but I've often wondered how well it actually worked, especially since Noch came out with their expensive Grass Master 'gun.'

Silfor also do 6mm static grass (maybe that is what Belg linked to?)

Mike, I wouldn't have thought that a magnet would do much to the grass from a shake bottle. The static grass applicators always seem to need a grounding wire to complete the circuit and the grass isn't magnetic by itself.

I have thought about making an electric applicator but was just thinking and wondered if a Van De Graff generator would be easier to make (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_de_Graaff_generator). I used one in an experiment at school and it could make hair, etc. stand up from quite an impressive distance away.

Some silk, a motor, a metal sphere and some bits and bobs would do it, though our purposes wouldn't require the 2 million volt machines that Mr Van De Graff made

Dave

Fantastic results.

Peter

BCT

I found them!!!

Here you can see the results of using clumps and bumps in the base material before putting down the grass fibers.




I just put down fibers without the Grassmaster for the first layer, to get a knocked down look to the grass, and then did a second layer with the GM to have standing areas of weeds.

I was also going for a wild flower look, something like an alpine meadow, using colored sawdust for the flowers themselves.




This one was done with the same length fibers for both grass layers.



Most of the variation is caused by the clumps of base material and the layering of grass fibers.

I just read about this in the past few days, but for the life of me I can't remember where. It may have been on a thread but the gist of the article was you take a business card style magnet...cut it in half inch strips and wrap around the container. From the pictures that were with the thread/article it appeared to work pretty well.

Wish I could remember where I saw that. If it comes to me I will pass it along.

Dave :erm:

Dave D., I remember seeing those photos in another thread and thinking how great that little bit of scenery looks. Thanks for reposting them.

Dave, I know I read that about the magnets somewhere. I kept thinking I saw it in a descriptive blurb in a Walther's Catalog. I spent about 30 minutes yesterday afternoon going through some of my old Walthers trying to find it. Even going back as far as the 1988 edition hasn't given me the info. If I get some time today I'll look at some from the early 80's. It will drive me :crazy: if I don't find it. :erm:

MikeC,

You might look here on discuuion of various Noch products.

Regards,

Trent Mulkern

Mechanicsville, MD

MikeC,

You might look here on discussion of various Noch products. http://www.ztrains.com/pages/worksho...ic/static.html

Regards,

Trent Mulkern

Mechanicsville, MD

Thanks for that link, Trent. There wasn't any mention of the magnets, but I did see a link to a how-to page with step-by-step instructions and a parts list to build a homemade applicator. They call it a "Grassinator," but it works just the same as the Grass Master and as Joe Fugate's homemade version.

MikeC,

Noch also makes a manual static grass bottle that uses the grass fibers rubbing against themselves to generate static grass (no magnet). If I use some peice of plastic and rub it against my hair it will also generate static electricity, or walking across a rug, or and so forth - in either case no magnets were/are used. The reviews are somewhat mixed, but for ).

Thwere maybe some forum folks that have already tried out to Noch manual static bottle.

Regards,

Trent Mulkern

Mechanicsville, MD