Repair And Restoration
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Foam Cutters
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Foam Cutters
What is the current best foam cutter? Hot wire foam factory or have we moved on? There are some short ones on Amazon that look cool. My current set of the originalish ones are pretty bent. Seems like a shorter shaft would be superior.
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15 Replies
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Best foam cutters was one I made from wire (NiCh wire I believe) recovered from a toaster hooked up to a car battery charger. Otherwise I have used one similar to what is linked above
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Man, I’d love to hear more about toaster heaters.
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Not sure if you are being sarcastic or not (if you are ignore the rest) but in the off chance you are not…
Nichrome wire is nothing super special been around a long time. It’s just a material that can take hi amounts of current and give of large amounts of heat (due to it’s resistance (like a resistor) without snapping. A steel wire lasts about 3 seconds with similar voltage and amperage across it. This allows the wire to be made really thin like picture frame wire or thinner so it’s light weight and doesn’t take much space. You can see the wire in a toaster if you look down from the top it’s what’s being guarded off and what glows red when the toaster is on. I’m any case you can find the wire in a large variety of kitchen appliances like toasters, crock pots, slow cookers, some small convection ovens. Pretty much anything that gets hot and is cheap. I should note that I think it’s starting to be replaced with ceramic heating elements as the ceramic is less of a fire risk. So depending on your location and consumer protection laws the easeness of procurement may vary
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Not sarcastic. Thank you for sharing. We try to keep that normal forum energy to a minimum round here.
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@nicholaspeshman You just got me off my ass and inspired to make a new resistance heater video. I had all the stuff on my old website which I nuked without consideration a few months ago.
Here is the parts list from McMaster if you’re interested in replication without toaster destruction. This idea comes from the mind of Frank Ford.
https://www.mcmaster.com/catalog/129/183/51755K11
https://www.mcmaster.com/catalog/129/4270/8880K78
https://www.mcmaster.com/catalog/129/985/5335K12
mcmaster.com
McMaster-Carr is the complete source for your plant with over 595,000 products. 98% of products ordered ship from stock and deliver same or next day.
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Ian, I vaguely thought you went to the foam cutters are you still going with the resistance heaters?
I am probably way clumsier here than I should be but I think these foam cutters are maybe too fragile for my clumsiness.
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Ive never tried foam cutters, but I think a couple people who tried them both said that the cutters were slightly more resilient.
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Thanks for posting the video. I was racking my brain trying to think of what the heck you would want foam cutters for in lutherie. This make sense. I used them in making foam rc airplanes and stopped doing so due to the fumes. I was thinking maybe it was to do some kind of lost casting technique for tuners or something lol.
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I’ve had something in the works in the background but keep hitting walls I’m not happy with. As such, I’m still using the original Hot Wire Foam Factory I first recommended and they’re still going strong…
Doc
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I’ve used these about ten times they seem to work great, haven’t tried any others…
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0825ZWQ57/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
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Does anybody have a link to the drill bit they’re using with the foam cutters? I know TWoodford uses an airplane but, but not sure where he got it from.
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my hardware store had a pretty small long bit, I can’t remember the diameter, but it was close enough that the foam cutter got stuck-ish. You don’t need a hugely long bit.
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Here are links to the long aircraft bits I use.
Depending on the diameter of your foam cutters:
5/64 drill bit:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001AHU5I4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1
3/32″ drill bit:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0062I8WTU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1
Cheers,
Elaine
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