It's taken me a long while to buy a static grass tool. The little Noch puffer bottle works OK but if I need electric fibres, I made a cheapo tool using a tea strainer and fly-swat. This works OK too except when I manage to give myself a shock with it. Ever more work making model railways means that I finally persuaded myself that £75 for a Greescene Flockit device was worth the investment.
The tool sat on the shelf for a few weeks until I needed to make grass on a diorama. Before hitting something for a magazine, I thought I'd better give it a go on something else. I remembered seeing a demo where it is used to make little grass tufts on kitchen silver foil so thought I'd have a go at that. Everyone needs tufts sometimes don't they?
In the battery compartment, I discovered that a good quality PP3 is included so plugged it in, clipped the earth lead to the foil, spotted this with PVA and had a go.
The results are very nice. Initial worries that the fibres would fall straight out of the hopper thanks to the large gauge were unfounded. Shaking the device in the manner of a sonic screwdriver over the sheet saw little nylon fibres attracted to the glue. A few seconds later they all looked nice an hairy.
This made me think. You can buy tufts like these, almost certainly made the same way. Cost for 92 tufts is £11.00
This means if I need 628 over the lifetime of the tool, if I ignore the tiny cost of fibres, then I'm in profit!