When the going gets Tuft....

Inspired by Tamsin's posts about her ongoing experiments with the Flockbox, I opted to pick up one for myself.  I have been using Tajima's terrain tufts on my projects of late, but the cost of postage has somewhat soured the experience.  I found it on Ebay UK for 35UKP + 4.40UKP for shipping.  (about $50 USD total at the current exchange rate.)  It actually arrive back in January (shipping was < 2 weeks), but I have only now been able to try it out.  Quite honestly, Tamsin's posts are far more informative than anything you are going to get from me, so skip this and just look there....

Here is what you get:

The box includes two wires, some silicon paper and a battery pack for a 9V battery.  There are also instructions and a DVD I have yet to look at.  (The DVD, not the instructions)  The electrical leads have standard plugs which are a bit annoying as it Alligator clips would work better for most applications.  I swapped out one of my cables for a test electrode from a multi-meter that I could at least stick in my sifter to complete the circuit.

For my  1st trial I went with some simple green tufts using PVA glue.  I am still playing with methods, but I am alreadt hooked on this thing.  The grass went on quickly and the results look like what I purchased in the past.  I can vary the shapes to suit my needs, and I am exited to try directly applying static grass to the bases.  I tend to feel guilty about using too many tufts due to the cost, but I think this is going to eliminate that concern.  I have several large tubs of static grass already, which should be more than enough for the foreseeable future.