
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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