Portal Turret Build: Cutting Tools

As I was writing what I thought would be this week’s post I kept finding myself talking about the tools used for cutting and how to build or buy them so I have decided to dedicate this week’s post to talking about the tools and methods that will determine those tools for cutting.

I am going to begin with the method I used, a method I would not suggest using, which was to use a survival saw and ask a friend to come down and help me for over an hour to hand saw through the entire egg. This method fails for a lot of the reasons, it’s slow, lots of human error and it takes two people. It is successful in that the survival saw is nice and thin as well as it can turn 90 degrees with not issues. The reason you need two people is very obvious, one person cannot keep  enough tension on the saw to produce a good cut.

My saw…not fun.

A second method that I attempted and have read other people used to cut foam is a hot wire knife. I attempted a lazy version of this by blowtorching the survival saw and trying to cut into the egg, this method worked briefly but also showed its failings quickly. The problem with the simple method of blowtorch and cut is that the saw lost heat immediately. A second issue also arose from attempting this that I can see as a major issue, for me, is that any misstep is a cut into the foam. I personally would not recommend this method unless you feel very comfortable in your hot-wire cutting skills. The benefits to this method is that it can be done by one person and the heat cuts through foam relatively fast, assuming you can maintain the heat.

The method that I would advise using is to make a one person saw for the survival saw to keep tension on it. The best way to do this would be to make a saw which allows you to mount the saw and then pull it tight with a hinge mechanism. This saw will look very similar to a hack saw or the hot-wire saw. The with the survival saw on its new mounting assuming its keeping good tension cutting will be very simple, relative to the methods I mentioned above; it should maintain a straight line which means less errors and better cuts.

This is my advice to prepare you for next weeks post about cutting the egg up, you can look into methods for building your own hot-wire knife if that’s a method you want to use as well as into how to build a simple tensionable saw. Next week I will go over techniques for cutting up the egg so that you can be more successful than I was at this step. Good luck prepping this step.