After the crawler project fell through, I decided to occupy myself this Winter by building a farm diorama using some of the 1/64th scale farm toys I've collected over the years.

Pretty far off-topic for a gun forum so I haven't burdened y'all with a play-by-play, but I'm working with a new (to me, at least) medium and technique that is just too cool not to document.

I'm working with "static grass". It's some sort of plastic fiber that comes in various lengths and colors. I have some yellow-green in 4mm and medium green in 7mm.



It's applied with a "static" (negative ion) generator. There are ready-made static grass applicators out there running from $35 up into three figures. Being a cheap esso bee, I built one out of a $10 "electronic fly swatter".



It's intended to run off a pair of AA cells (3V) but I Tim-the-Toolman'ed it and run it off a 9v battery. You clip the positive lead to a conductive base and place the grass to be applied on the base.



Clip the negative lead to the conductive armature you want to build the tree on and hit it with some spray adhesive, then turn Ol' Sparky on and bring the armature near the pile of grass and it'll align between the armature and the base. When it stops sticking, spray again, and apply another layer. I start with 4mm grass for the base and then add 7mm towards the bottom to get the shape I want.



The resulting "fir" trees look pretty darn good IMHO.

You can reverse the polarity, putting the negative on the base and hooking the positive to a shaker with a metal screen (a kitchen strainer works well) and apply the grass to the base scenery as well. I haven't tried that yet, but I have made a few "tufts" by putting a dab of glue on the pan and adding grass from above. Looking forward to trying it on my scenery base when I get to that point.

Note to self: When holding the metal hemostats with the armature in one hand, it is not generally advised to adjust the position of the tray with the other hand. 12KV will BITE even at some miniscule fraction of a milliamp...

quote:

Originally posted by PHPaul:
Note to self: When holding the metal hemostats with the armature in one hand, it is not generally advised to adjust the position of the tray with the other hand. 12KV will BITE even at some miniscule fraction of a milliamp...

"milliamp" or "milliwhap"?

quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:

quote:

Originally posted by PHPaul:
Note to self: When holding the metal hemostats with the armature in one hand, it is not generally advised to adjust the position of the tray with the other hand. 12KV will BITE even at some miniscule fraction of a milliamp...

"milliamp" or "milliwhap"?

Not sure, but I DO know it's equal to one full-volume "DAMN, that smarts!", followed by a quick look around and a "Ya Dumbass!"

Interesting hobby. More interesting is the fact that you can source some of the needed items using science. Very cool. Pickle Rick.

Cool!

Let us know how your project turns out.

Looks very realistic. I used to build models and dioramas. I found that if you dug up a root and washed it off, it made a pretty good tree trunk.

You should definitely check out Luke Towan's Youtube channel. His dioramas are amazing, and his tutorials are really useful. It might give you some ideas.

Your tree is lookin' good already!

While I am to busy with work, four little kids, and other hobbies to dabble in this stuff right now, I think it's awesome and some day when I retire, I'll likely partake...probably in conjunction with some model trains. So please continue to "burden" us with the play-by-play! That tree looks very realistic, and the process is really interesting. I'm also impressed by your homemade electrocution device .

That's a pretty cool technique! Keep the play-by-play coming, I think it's cool to see what others do for hobbies. I piddled around with dioramas when I was heavy into plastic airplane models back in my early teens, so this new-fangled technology is pretty interesting to an old fart like me.

Cool.

I used to build 1/35 scale models of WW2 armored vehicles back in junior high and high school.

Check this out: Diorama & Model

It's awesome.

For instance:

Some of you may get the humor in this shot.

I always enjoy your threads...

Your tinkering in various things is refreshing...

Don't build them but I really enjoy looking at them.

Love the attention to detail

Love the machine shed, and humor!
Regarding the grass, are you going to have to mow?

quote:

Originally posted by Pyker:
Check this out: Diorama & Model

It's awesome.

For instance:

This an awesome site. Here are few more dioramas:







Incredible talent by these guys.

Jim

The hot-rod flyswatter did okay with the 4mm stuff but wouldn't make the 7mm grass stand up. Even with the 4mm stuff I had to be so close to the work that I'd get an arc occasionally if I twitched.

I was concerned as to whether or not it would work at all on a larger, less conductive area like the base material of the layout. I want to put a bunch of "grass" in a couple of areas, but it needs to stand up to look right. Decided to build a bigger generator. Ordered a 12v module from Amazon. First one came in and was no good, returned it and they were out of stock so ordered a different, slightly cheaper one.

It came in today. I grabbed a 12v 3 amp WII power supply at Good Will for $5 and grabbed a project box and other doodads out of my pile and built a nice enclosure with a gozon-gozoff switch, an LED power indicator and banana jacks for the leads.

The Big Hawg will suck 7mm grass out of the shaker from 3 inches away and make it stand at attention! Woohoo!

Mrs. Downeaster was looking at the layout and said "Where's the house?"

"House?" sez I, "I got a barn and a shop, don't need no steenkin' house!" (Running joke with us about farmers. I'll spend money on a garage or shop before I'll put another nickle in this @#($ing house...)

But, she's right. Found a nice farmhouse kit from Walthers that wasn't TOO ridiculously priced and ordered it. Necessitated relocating the grain bins and the shop, but will give me an excuse to put in a nice "lawn" with the 4mm grass.

I was looking around yesterday looking at model steam engines and came across this site.

https://www.pmmodelengines.com...ools/machine-models/

You really need to add a machine shop.

Same technique, different armature. "Leaves" aren't right but otherwise does a pretty fair imitation of an apple tree. Drops of red paint for the apples.



Previously built trees planted as a hedge/view block between where the house will be and the "Spare Inventory" pile behind the shop. Waiting on some plastic shingle castings to roof the garage.

Car is a '63/'64 Ford wagon I found in a $5.00 stack of Matchbox toys at Walmart. I'll give the rest to the great-grandsons, the Ford was the only thing appropriate to the era. Added a little rust along the fender lips and the rocker panels. I mean, it IS a 60's Ford!

Seeing as I'm gonna have a house, figured I needed a vehicle for Mom and the Kids.

Back in high school in early 80s (!), I built several dioramas of 1/35th scale WWII models. Tamiya if I recall. No surviving pictures. They were pretty good for the times and my age. Alas, no pictures and nothing remains but my memories...