Forward motion, headfirst & horizontal to gravity!

Heat Guns?

This is a ? for anyone else that has ever built a board from foam and melted layers together. What brand and model do you recommend for a heat gun? I'm using a Wagner. It puts out enough heat, but since the end of the gun is only about an inch in diameter, it's hard to heat enough of a part of foam to melt it on. By the time I get one end of my hip or side rails ready to adhere, the other end has already cooled down. Any recommendations are appreciated.

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Permalink Reply by Al Heim on September 21, 2011 at 5:39pm

Haven't done this per se, but from my welding experience came up with these ideas.

1. Use heat lamps to keep the area you are working on from cooling down. Fairly cheap fix, rate of cooling will depend on the ambient temperature surrounding the piece.

2. Heat tape. Found this site(http://www.heatingtapes.com/tape.html). Looks like their mono type tape (for non-conducting surfaces) may work. If you put a dimmer switch on an extension cord you maybe able to regulate the temperature to just below melting (I would check with them first, I have used this type of arrangement to adjust the speed on my hand grinder).

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Permalink Reply by Waterboarder1 on September 24, 2011 at 4:01am

Hey Kevin,

You might try a commercial heat-gun with a "spreader" to redirect the heat from the small round nozzle to a wider area. look at this Snap-on catalog page:

http://buy1.snapon.com/catalog/item.asp?P65=&tool=all&item_...

I am sure there are burlier guns out there that can shoot heat even wider than the 3" of the Snap-On.

Hope this helps

Dean