My Idea for a One Man Fishing Boat


After I figured out I needed a better way to shape these things I remembered reading about using a hot wire to cut the foam. I searched around the internet and found a lot of information about home made hot wire foam cutters so I took a detour and built one for myself.

The first one I built used a weak 24 volt transformer and it burnt up in less than one pass. I tried to use a Dimmer switch to turn down the power to the wire but that doesn't work either. I ended up just turning it on for a few seconds at a time otherwise the wire got too hot and broke. You can see the wire deformed in this picture, as it cools it gets tight again.

I designed the Pontoons to be 12" wide on the top and taper to 10" on the bottom thinking that would give them better tracking through the water, we will see later on the maiden voyage.

 

 

I flipped them over and put a 1x2 under the outer edge to hold it on an angle then ran it through the wire again to cut the taper.

It really worked pretty well.

The darker vertical lines are from stopping to let the wire cool. If I do it again I will get the proper rheostat  to control the wire temperature.


 
 

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