Bridge at 69th Street

[Gary S]

what are you using to cut your foam? I have only done a small amount of work and have used a knife. It was very messy and I was not very happy with the results. I thought I should buy a hot wire tool, just not sure if they are worth the money, or which one is worth getting.

Greg, on the old layout, I used knives and a wire brush to form the foam. The wire brush was extremely messy - small particles of foam that stuck to everything. It was a pain in the rear for sure.

But I recently purchased a couple of Stanley Surform Tools from Home Depot. They are over in the same area with the files and rasps. One of them is gray metal tool, about 4 inches long, sort of like a wood plane. It has a metal "screen" on the bottom with teeth that cut the foam really nicely. It works great on straight and convex areas. The other tool is similar, but is a yellow plastic handle with a shorter curved metal "screen" under it. It can be used on concave surfaces.

I use a long "sheetrock" saw for making major cuts, then the surform tools to get the contours where I want them.

The surform tools capture the foam particles inside the tool for the most part, and can then be emptied out, but it is still necessary to keep a shop vac handy and vacuum up the mess every so often. I'm really glad I found these things!

There are two things these tools don't work for. They can't do skinny ditches real deep.... wire brush will do that. And, they cannot cut within about a 1/4" of the backdrop because of the way the tool is built.