Cutting seat foam

If you’re ever tempted to make a new seat, the foam to use is reconstituted foam - it’s very firm, but is difficult to cut reliably. I’ve tried:

  • Electric foam cutter pen (bought cheaply from Ebay). This works, but is very, very slow. They’re okay for light foam, I think, but not for the heavy stuff.
  • Hand Saw (had one already). This is sort of okay, but it is messy and it’s hard to cut straight because the saw distorts the foam as it ‘bites’. I did get some reasonable results.
  • Bread knife (wife not happy!). This is okay - it distorts the foam less than the hand saw.
  • Electric carving knife (cheap, from a Web store). This is the thing to use. The one I have cost me just £12. It has two reciprocating blades and goes through the foam really smoothly. It makes no mess and I’m so pleased that I thought I should share my experience.

Funnily, when I looked on Amazon or Ebay for ‘electric carving knife’, I got no useful hits at all. Maybe my searches were affected by cookies or something. But my search on the web using Google came up with the knife I bought (from Ship It Appliances) at a great price.

Hope this helps someone.

Nick

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Electric bread knife is the way to go with recon’ foam. Gently brush with a hand rasp for final shape. There are different grades of recon’ foam, some are rock hard. I made my saddle and rode it with a very very loose cover to make sure it worked then applied another layer of 1/4" foam to smooth any bumps, before final fitting. When happy, a heat gun for final fitting is good. Final layer can be closed cell foam.

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