Thursday, September 3, 2009

Steve-O is a Know-It-All Smarty-Pants

There's been a thread on the Garage of Evil's Yahoo Groups that had proven helpful, but too late for my Beloved tombstone. Someone asked about what is the best method for cutting pink foam board. Lots of answers came in. Some lucky dog had a table saw and gave his advice about that. Someone had a hot wire foam cutter they suggested be used. I used a jigsaw, which doesn't work well if you have 2" foam. Come to think of it, it doesn't work that great because you have to sand things down and hope for the best.
Please note massive gap, later filled in by Great Stuff.So after we had all pretty much proven we didn't know what the Hell we were talking about (in great detail, by the way) Steve-O from the Garage of Evil put his freakin' two cents in:

"For long straight cuts I have really good success marking out the line,then I have a sharp (don't laugh it works great) lock knife. I run itsorta lightly down the line, more interested in getting a perfect linethan cutting deep. With about 3-4 successive cuts the blade will gosmoothly through, deeper each time. You'll be surprised how well thisworks. After 3-4 scores thinner foam will just separate, the 2" stuffyou can then snap like you would drywall/wallboard.Try it on some scrap, you'll be surprised how quick and clean it is."

Even though I had already made my ugly cuts for Beloved, I had a bunch of boards (both pink and white beadfoam) left to cut for tombstones, so I tried it late on Sunday. To thoroughly test the ease of use of this technique, I had a gin martini first. Now as fun as power tools and alcohol, but I figured a sharp blade would run a close second.

It worked like a champ on both types of board. While it may take longer, it is by far the best result for straight cuts.

Freakin' smart-ass. Oh, and thanks, Steve-O.

2 comments:

  1. I had to look up what a lock knife was.

    I have a lock knife. A bad ass one at that :)

    Will try it out on foam next time around. I've been looking for a reason to use it (besides mugging people).

    ReplyDelete
  2. I use my lock knife all the time... I'm also a big fan of scoring to cut foam. I rarely use any other method for straight cuts.

    And yeah, Steve-O is a HUGE smart-ass. :)

    ReplyDelete

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