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So, let's imagine for a moment that I am too cheap to buy a hot knife unless I absolutely have to in order to make terrain. Are there are any cost-effective alternatives to hot knives when it comes to slicing and shaping foam in order to make terrain?

A razor blade, some masking tape, and a whole lot of elbow grease.

what your going to spend in other replacement tools would more than pay for a few hot knives..

Tenth Speed Writer wrote:A razor blade, some masking tape, and a whole lot of elbow grease.

Can you achieve the same kinds of effects with a simple razor blade as you can with a hot knife?

grayshadow87 wrote:

Tenth Speed Writer wrote:A razor blade, some masking tape, and a whole lot of elbow grease.

Can you achieve the same kinds of effects with a simple razor blade as you can with a hot knife?

Depends what kind of terrain your talking about.... Nothing dulls razor blades faster then cutting through foam though.

Warning bad idea warning no unsafe bad not responsible
^this

It's possible to make your own. I made one with a butter knife that I wrapped in stripped wiring from a cell phone charger. I covered the wiring and handle with high temp rtv silicone, available at wallmart in the auto section as a gasket maker. Took a day to cure, then I added another layer. Sandwiched this between two more kitchen knives and wrapped it in duct tape. It is rated to 600 degrees, but wear gloves anyway.
I've since moved on to an actual hot knife, but for $10 vs $300, I sometimes miss it.

That v
Don't do it What are you insane No BAD Warning Hot knives are hot

I dont know about nothing, but pretty much what Catyrpelius said. The amount of money you'll save in not having to buy replacement blades is worth it alone.

Curses. Looks as though I'll have to break over and buy one then. Oh well, I needed to stop by Hobbytown tomorrow anyway....

Thanks for the advice, folks.

Catyrpelius wrote:

grayshadow87 wrote:

Tenth Speed Writer wrote:A razor blade, some masking tape, and a whole lot of elbow grease.

Can you achieve the same kinds of effects with a simple razor blade as you can with a hot knife?

Depends what kind of terrain your talking about.... Nothing dulls razor blades faster then cutting through foam though.

You've obviously never met a greasy teenager then.

Hot wire cutters are cheap and will do just as good a job as a hot knife. You can get them in craft stores for around $20 and although they will chew through batteries pretty quickly, it's not hard to hook up a socket for an AC adaptor plugpack to them (provided you know basic electronics and know which end to use of a soldering iron).

Throwin it out there...
http://hotwirefoamfactory.com/-K11C-Crafters-Deluxe-Hot-Knife-Kit.html

repairs/replacement blades are expensive I guess, but if you be careful should be a non-issue.

grayshadow87 wrote:Curses. Looks as though I'll have to break over and buy one then. Oh well, I needed to stop by Hobbytown tomorrow anyway....

Thanks for the advice, folks.

I got my a foam cutter (wire type) for $8 at Michael's Craft store. It comes with 2 extra wires. They run a lot of 50% off coupons at these places. I went in with a friend and it was really cheap. You can also make one, though in the long run it will probably cost more time and money.

I made my entire foam lava board with a single wire. Literally cuts like a hot knife through butter

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Making_Dynamic%2C_Craggy_Hills One of the best looking terrain you'll see. Never used a hot knife.

Pics:

If you don't use a hot knife, use a serrated blade (bread knife, hack saw, maybe even a butter knife) instead of razor blades. Be prepared for a mess though.

I use a cheap kitchen carving knife. Can sharpen it as you go on a steel. Gets far too expensive using disposable blades.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Archim3des wrote:Warning bad idea warning no unsafe bad not responsible
^this

It's possible to make your own. I made one with a butter knife that I wrapped in stripped wiring from a cell phone charger. I covered the wiring and handle with high temp rtv silicone, available at wallmart in the auto section as a gasket maker. Took a day to cure, then I added another layer. Sandwiched this between two more kitchen knives and wrapped it in duct tape. It is rated to 600 degrees, but wear gloves anyway.
I've since moved on to an actual hot knife, but for $10 vs $300, I sometimes miss it.

That v
Don't do it What are you insane No BAD Warning Hot knives are hot

Id like to reiterate how bad of an idea making something like this is.... The potential for injury, death and property destruction is massive.

There are far safer ways to make your own than slapping a power supply onto kitchen knives (sites like Instructables have several tutorials for proven designs), but unless you have most of the tools and materials on hand, already, you're likely to spend as much as buying one of the cheaper models, ready-made. If you buy, get a corded model - they run at a more consistent temperature than battery operated models and you don't have to keep replacing batteries, which saves you money/charging time in the (not terribly) long run.

If you go the mechanical route, craft knife/razor blades work for small and detail cuts, though foam does dull them quickly. A cheap bread knife will make faster work of the roughing out stage and last longer. Cheap rasps and sandpaper make smoothing and rounding messy, but relatively quick and easy.

Me and a friend made an entire trench system *a very small one* using only a GW knife, a £1 set of scalpels and some chisels...look a lot of time and made a complete mess...but we did it

Skippy wrote:
Id like to reiterate how bad of an idea making something like this is.... The potential for injury, death and property destruction is massive.

Agreeing with everything you just said. Tack those words straight on my warnings, folks, as well as adding them to this next idea.

If you want to make a Safer version, take a small hot glue gun and hammer a nail slightly larger than the glue spout into the nozzle of the hot glue gun. Clip the head of the nail, and if you like, put some of the high temp RTV into where the glue would go, just to hold the nail in there a little better. Hot glue guns are all the same basic design. A cone of metal that heats up by running electricity through it, and a glue stuffing mechanism that grabs a stick of glue and rams it into this hot cone.

So by jamming a nail backwards into the glue gun, you now have a device that will not heat glue, but instead heat up the nail you jammed in there. That nail gets hot enough to cut foam, but is of course hot enough to burn you. Just like a plugged in hot glue gun would.

How about a hot wire cutter?

Harbor Freight has one for cheap (that I was looking into buying when I worked there) but all of their tools are unreliable and usually break in the first few uses.

Archim3des wrote:

Skippy wrote:
Id like to reiterate how bad of an idea making something like this is.... The potential for injury, death and property destruction is massive.

Agreeing with everything you just said. Tack those words straight on my warnings, folks, as well as adding them to this next idea.

**snipped**

Please stop. Seriously. I haven't met too many kids in my life that bother to read the warning labels before diving right in; and I'm sure plenty e on this board.

Quite frankly, the only people that should be given those instructions are the ones that don't need them because they already know how to do it.

http://www.harborfreight.com/130-watt-heavy-duty-hot-knife-66182.html

Does not get much cheaper than this, and for what it is worth, I have never really had any problems with the Harbor Freight stuff I have bought.

Ashton

Oh dear lord do not try to build an electric self-death machine out of wires and a butter knife. This is a monumentally bad idea. There is a reason why most accidents happen at home, and that reason is because a long time ago GW released a terrain making guide that showed how you can carve hills with a hot foam cutter to achieve "that look." You know, that vertical banding around the edges that makes styrofoam look vaguely like a flat-topped tailings pile you might see in front of a mine. And now that's the standard because it's what everyone is familiar with.

There are other ways to make terrain people! (Thanks for posting my guide Heartserenade) An extendable, heavy-duty hobby knife costs about dollar. A small pack of quality replacement blades costs $3 - $4. The blades do dull "fast" but not instantly. I just made about half a table's worth of hills on one blade. Weigh that against the time you'll spend fiddling with an improvised system, or what you'll spend on a quality hot knife that wont break almost immediately.



Extendable hobby knives also feature these exciting benefits:

No messy strands of melted goo all over your hills.

Hobby knives do not create potentially harmful fumes as you cut foam.

A more versatile cutting tool that lets you carve sharp features, instead of just melting anything it touches.

No waiting for the blade to heat

No cursing and yelling because you forgot your blade was on and you reached over the table to grab your Mountain Dew and your tender forearm grazed over the heating element.

Hot knives have a lifespan, and the less you pay for them, the faster they die.

Much lower chance of fatal electrocution .

You can cut a lot more than foam with a hobby knife.

With only a few extra minutes of work you can still achieve that "classic look" for a foam wargaming hill, but why limit yourself. Heck, even just randomly broken chunks of foam look better than those generic vertical hot foam cutter hills.

Always a pleasure, terraformer. I made hills with your tutorial, will post pics soon now that the Dakka Painting challenge is finished.

Another plus with the usual hobby knife: you can bring it when crossing a dark, scary alley... and you had the urge of cutting the price tag on your newly-bought shirt.

heartserenade wrote:

Another plus with the usual hobby knife: you can bring it when crossing a dark, scary alley...

I tried carrying around a hot-foam cutter for personal defense, but the extension cords started getting pricey and impractical. Also, very few styrofoam muggers out there.

Lucky you. In my neighborhood there are lots of people who would kill to have pink foam in their hands.