The folks over at The Hot Wire Foam Facotry were very kind in sending over their 3 in 1 Crafter's Kit. The Hot Wire Foam Factory produce a wide range of foam cutting tools for craft and professional use. Our review sample was supplied by The Hot Wire Foam Factory directly so we cannot comment on the purchase process.

The 3-in-1 craft kit, comprises of three tools and a video all housed in a sturdy carrying case, very convienient for storage. There's nothing worse than getting a fancy new tool and loosing all of the little bits and pieces that go with it when you throw it in the tool box.

The kit is not cheap, but it's pretty comprehensive in what you can do with it. The kit comes with a hot knife cutting tool, an engraving too,a sculpting tool, power supply, and an instructional DVD. The value of the kit is good, you get the Carrying Case, Power Supply, and Three Tools for far less than purchasing everything individually.

The first thing they suggest you do is make a crude holder for your tools out of styrofoam so that the warm part of the blade doesnt touch anything when the tool is not in use. We also recommend you do this and it should be the first thing you do, as accidents happen with carelessness. All three tools run off of the same power supply and they all have a convenient on and off switch. So the first big plus (+) is obviously the fact that you no longer have to worry about batteries when using the tool. The on / off switch is the second big thumbs up from us, the safety and convenience are great.

As always use hot knives and cutters in a well ventilated area.

The construction of the tools seems sturdy enough, the plastic handles do not transmit heat, the rubber strips on the handle provides a superior grip to just plastic alone, and the tool is light for ease of use and control.

The sculpting tool's two prongs that hold the wire swivel for storage purposes and to make it easier to install the wire. They also allow for speciallty cuts like loops and contours which may be usefull in the creation of rock formations or a specifically shaped slope (craters, rolling hills, etc...), see examples below.

Click image to enlarge

Click image to enlarge

One problem we found was that the prongs seemed as if they weren't tight enough to keep the wire completely snug for straight cuts, when we tried cutting through the styrofoam the wire wasn't snug and if you pulled to hard you could mess up your cutting. Patience seems to be the key when using the sculpting tool and as the Hot Wire Foam Factory says: always let the heat do the cutting, not force. Anyone who's used a battery powered cutter learns this lesson the hard way when the batteries run low.

Tightening the bolts and nuts only temporarily fixed the problem. The Hot Wire Foam Factory recommends simply pressing against both prongs with your fingers while cutting and being patient. Eric being an artist, is finicky about how things are held in his hands and didnt like this approach. We simply compromised and used the knife tool with a ruler for straight cuts, problem solved.

Also a loose wire isnt always a problem, when "drug" through the foam it made a cool glacier like effect.

*warning: use caution this may damage your wire*

The Hot Knife tool's blade is really long which is great, you can stack three layers of polystyrene and cut all three together making uniform cuts and details. Unfortunately we found that the hot knife's blade was also a little flimsy so that the resistance from the styrofoam made it difficult to use and sometimes bent the blade at the base where it connects. This could be because the heat is not controllable on the crafter's kit, although the heat seemed ideal for the sculpting tool, the same heat level didn't seem to cut it for the thicker blade of the hot knife cutting tool. Obviously a thicker blade would not be ideal because it would be harder to heat, thus getting us no where. So how it stands now, is that patience is a virtue: let the heat do the cutting not force. None the less, it still made awesome cuts and is far superior to any hot wire cutter we have ever tested.

The freedom granted to you by the knife is unbelievable. Older battery powered cutters limit you because both ends of the blade need to be touching in order to conduct electricity and thus heat the wire. With the knife you can do puncture holes, cut out caves, carve rocks, create totem poles, or make craters for a lunar land scape... the possibilities are endless.

As you can see from the image below, excess polystyrene gets glued to the blade, so regular cleaning is necessary. Small price to pay for such a great tool though, and as anyone will learn anyway (painters, sculptors, carpenters, mechanics) taking care of your tools is absolutely vital. It may be time consuming and a hassle, but a paintbrush with dried up clumps of acrylics in it is useless, likewise a hot wire cutter with clumps of polystyrene stuck to it wont do any good with precise cuts and lines.

We found the Hot Knife to be a great resource that seems to have been lacking in the past: a straight hot knife not confined on both ends like a battery powered cutter or the Sculpting Tool.

The Engraving Tool is like the Hot Knife, it's blade is shorter and sturdier and it has a small tip on the end for engraving into the foam. The blade is too thick to think of using for any other purpose, this tool cannot replace the original Hot Knife.

Some of the free hand patterns we did, this could be used for cutting out brick walls, detailing sand bags and emplacements, signing your name on the bottom of your terrain, etc..

Overall we very much enjoyed the kit, at first we thought the one power supply would limit our productivity but the blades heated up so fast that switching between tools wasn't even a setback. The cord is plenty long at about fifteen (15) feet it will easily reach your workstation or desk. The kit was complete with basically everything you need but the lack of the controllable heat made the Hot Knife lack slightly.

We would definitely recommend this kit to anyone looking to take their terrain to the next level. But we now also highly recommend the
Pro Power Station. We give the Foam Factory 3 in 1 Crafter's Kit four and a half Marauders. You can't really ask for more out of a Hot Knife kit.