Grassinator/DIY Grassmaster

At left is a photo of the new Grassinator just finished today. What is a Grassinator? A DIY version of the Noch Gras-Master that statically charges flocking so that it stands up when glued to the scenery base. The Gras-Master retails for $199. This version required about $45 in materials. Much appreciation goes to the Ztrains folks for the idea and to Jeff Schumaker for his execution and refinement of this idea. Jeff also supplied the ionizer used. The Ztrains web page describing how to build this neat tool is: http://www.ztrains.com/pages/tech/grassinator/grassinator.html. Jeff gave a clinic on building this at the 2009 Midwest Narrow Gauge meet.
The hole on the side is to access the power switch. The ionizer used had a power switch built in so rather than bypass it, I mounted the board with the switch behind the hole. This one also runs on a 9 volt battery since the ionizer did. This made it cheaper because no jack and power supply were required. I used a butter tub for the grass basket instead of a Tupperware container. The screen was expoxied inside the lid. Hopefully this will hold up to repeated flexing of the lid when loading the static grass. If not the butter tube will be replaced by a Tupperware container. Time will tell.

I hope to apply a test patch of flock tomorrow.