Hello All, Being new to the hobby I’m going to have 1001 questions, I’m in the process of designing my layout and was wondering about foam forming. It seems the hot wire is th eway to go. My question is where do you get them or are they a custom made kind of thing? If they are for sale please let me know who carries them.
Practically any local hobby shop that carries Woodland Scenics supplies will have their hot wire foam cutter or you can order one on-line from the many dealers that have scenery materials.
Hi,
Woodland Scenics makes a hot wire cutter for foam. Its $40 though. You should be able to get it form your LHS if they carry Woodland Scenics stuff. It looks something like this
http://www.expotools.co.uk/l.aspx?k=2788820
Hope this helps
Joe
The big craft stores also carry pretty decent foam cutters. Also check their prices on plaster cloth too,often a dollar or two cheaper than WS. Also take a look in the dried flower dept fo good prices on Lichen and dried weeds for tree armatures. BILL
I found that using the hot knife was a test of patience. On 2" foam I found it was hard to cut it square and or straight. I found that using a hand saw on 4x8 sheets was the best for straight cuts and the band saw for most other cuts. A utility knife or a hacksaw blade for 3/4 and 1" foam. For carving foam a broken hacksaw blade or the round end of it, an old chisel, a steak knife, pair of heavy long nose pliers, squeeze and pull, anything you can carve with gives great and better effects on mountains and cliff’s and rock formations, than does the hot knife, and I use sand paper. There is also a scraping foam hand tool available and I do use the shop vac frequently.
I’m sure there are others who bought a hot knife and never use it after trying it and developing different and more efficient techniques such as I did.
Welcome to the wonderful world of foam scenery. Next to DCC radio, its the funnest thing in my train room.
I do NOT find the hot wire the way to go. I use it a little to cut narrow stream beds and to do the back of Hoodoos but I generally do not like it for reasons stated above.
I am a fan of the pointed steak knife. I use other things, but 98% of my mountain scenes were done with the steak knife and a brass wire brush. Rather than repost all my pics you can see them by clicking on my sig. They are not organized but show what can be done by a non artist, a lot of foam and a steak knife.
I’ve got a hot wire cutter. It works pretty well for what it’s designed to do, which is trimming and shaping. If you look at the design, the hot wire runs across the top of a U-shaped frame. This limits you to cutting no more than 6 inches or so from the edge of the foam sheet. For creating slopes on hills, that’s fine, but it won’t do the job if you want to take a big sheet and cut it in half.
For bigger cuts, I just use a sharp camping knife with about a 5-inch blade. If you cut the foam more than half-way through (I use 2-inch foam) then you can often “score-and-snap” to get a reasonably clean edge.
Someone else makes a hot knife cutter, which is knife-shaped and doesn’t have the cut limit of the hot wire cutter.
Thanks a lot guys, I love these type of forums people are usually very helpful as you all are proving to be. I was pretty seriously involved with R/C racing for a while and decided to move onto the model rain scene. Its tough going from something your very familiar with to something completely new and foreign, although it is exciting learning new things. Thanks again for the tips and I’m sure you’ll be hearing from me soon.
Try an electric carving knife. It will make very nice cuts too with little mess.
Lex.
You can also insert a piece of bare solid 14 gauge copper wire into the soldering gun and get a super duty hot wire cutter. Not too good for exacting work, but makes nice hills and custom shapes like creek bottoms (just bend the wire into the shape that you need.)
Good luck.
Karl
I picked up a battery powered hot wire cutter designed for cutting floral foam at a craft store for under $15 about five years ago. Uses a couple of D batteries. Works great on pink and blue foam. John Timm