Foam Sculpting Tool.

[bigdave]

Doing some work on my dolphin boat I was using a tool I came up with to sculpt foam. It is very simple and cheap.
When I need to remove sections of foam from the inside of the hull when using the lost foam method this works great. It is basically a 100watt-soldering gun and some custom bent 12-gage wire. You can get these real cheap at places like Harbor Freight.
Just remove the stock iron tip and replace it with the 12-gage wire bent to whatever shape you need. It will take a minute or so for the wire to heat up enough. This beats trying to cut it out with a knife. When I get it down to a smaller amount of foam left I melt the rest out with Acetone. In this boat I wanted to leave a good amount of foam in the front for emergency floatation. This tool made it easy to scoop out the front and leave what I wanted to save. BD.

[crazy ivan]

Nice work, BD. Aside from

Nice work, BD. Aside from stores using them to cut and seal the ends of nylon rope, that is the first and only good use I have ever seen for that type of gun. In fact, I'm kinda ticked that I never thought of doing that. To take it one step further, that iron might even be made to power a more traditional hot wire foam cutter. Lots of possibilities suggesting themselves here.

[mylo]

Agreed,

.....I believe I know

Agreed,

.....I believe I know what I'm going to do with my soldering gun.

One foam cutting tool with multiple / exchangable wires, coming up.

Thanks BD, simple little suggestion, fantastic idea and yes, I feel somewhat stupid for not thinking of it without "help".

Mylo

[bigdave]

Thanks Guys! I have about

Thanks Guys! I have about 5 different sizes and shapes. The longer the wire the longer it will take to heat. The wire I am using is 12 gage copper house wire. If you go too thin on the wire you could melt it. Unless you are using Nicrome wire. Just be careful. BD.

[Larry Kuntz]

Nice piece of work BD.

Nice piece of work BD. A suggestion, if you need the wire to be stiffer and straighter I use a technique called "spinning" Simply put, you anchor one end of the wire in a vise and the other to a hand drill. It's like bending a piece of copper wire back and forth. It eventually becomes hard and breaks. Slowly give it a few turns, the more you turn it the more brittle it becomes. Low and behold a harder and straight piece of wire, and still able to be formed. Works great for any time you need a very straight piece of wire from coiled soft wire.

[bigdave]

Thanks Larry. Very interesting. http://www.subcommittee.com/forum/icon_wink.gif

Thanks Larry. Very interesting. BD.