This topic contains 11 replies, has 4 voices, and was last updated by 
blinky465 4 years, 1 month ago.
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I made a hot wire cutter. I know I’m probably late to the party, but I’m really excited about carving bits of foam for wood and brick effects. At least, I was. But now I’ve hit a problem.
My first bit of carving looked really nice – I just took a sharp pencil, drew a few lines and painted the styrofoam brown (a splash of quickshade and a light drybrush to finish the effect). The result was a really nice, clean, sharp set of lines.
But I’ve noticed that in later pieces, the pencil seems to “snag” or catch on the styrofoam, creating a more “knackered old wood” effect when painted up. I don’t dislike the effect, but what I really loved was the nice, sharp lines on the first piece I made.
It’s not the pencil, it’s definitely the styrofoam. And I narrowed it down to the difference between cut and “virgin” surface (I tried drawing the same wood effect on a fresh piece of styrofoam and the nice sharp details were there again).
So the question is – how do I prepare the cut faces of styrofoam so that it behaves like “virgin” material, ready to take pencil lines? I’ve tried lightly sanding it with emery paper but it didn’t really make much difference. I’ve tried cutting at different temperatures since I put a power control on the cutter (https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1570235/?order=asc) and hotter temperatures do seem to lessen the effect – but it’s still a problem.
How do you hot wire gurus draw on your cut styrofoam and avoid snagging?
Top – drawing wood grain onto an edge that has not been cut
Bottom – using exactly the same pencil and drawing technique, on the cut surface, the pencil catches and creates lots of tiny tears.
So…. how to make the cut surface more like the uncut edges so they can be drawn on to create textures?
Hmmm. That sounds like more hassle than… making a “hot pen” 😉
It’s not so easy to draw straight lines with. But is brilliant for wobbly woodgrain!
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