Cutting the Foam with the Dremel MS20
(copied from Facebook posts)
It was amazing how *spiffy* the Dremel coping saw was at cutting the HD EVA foam.
The pieces for the dog skull masks have pretty intricate shapes.
My mini-review of the Dremel MS20 Moto-Saw
The tool I bought for this job isthe Dremel Moto-Saw MS20. It can theoretically be used freehand but reviews say the ergonomics of that are terrible.
Snapped into its little table it makes a great little coping/scroll saw (for about $100). Mounting blades is tricky but not hard (a common complaint in reviews was about bent blades). The throat depth is not huge, but you can get a “twist blade” which cuts right-to-left instead of front to back and work with longer stock that way (as long as the width fits in the harp of the saw).
There are gates available that work with the table for precision straight cuts, but that was not my primary use.
Mounted in the table it only cuts vertically (90° with respect to the table surface), so it won’t bevel the foam. It will, as you can see in the photos, do fairly intricate curves due to the narrowness of the blade. I’m used to keeping my fingers clear of the needle in our almost-industrial sewing machine, so I had advance practice on the materials manipulation and was able to do these cuts on the first try.
For me, it’s an excellent value for this kind of work. I got mine through Amazon but you can get them through hardware stores too.The exact item I bought was the Dremel MS20-01 Moto-Saw Variable Speed Compact Scroll Saw Kit
Making short work of cutting all that foam!
It was 101°F when we got back from Oakland, so setting up the saw outside was not the least bit attractive, so I hooked up our Shark vacuum to the dust extraction port on the table and set to it.
(I *was* wearing ear protection because it was noisy with the vacuum running right next to me. )
In less than two hours I got all the 6mm and 10mm thick parts for two complete masks done, with none of the wrist complaints I’d have had from using knives or rotary cutters.
Definitely worth the investment!
