Woodie wrote:
I will try it with a piece of nylon and poly rope and let you know.

Thanks Marc.

I do not understand much of this electric stuff myself. But if you can get it to work as a cutter and sealer on nylon ropes, I will let my son look into it. It seems there is a lot of $$ to save by doing this yourself.
So pls let me know how it works on a nylon rope.

Merry Christmas!

Woodie.

Tried it with a piece of 3/8" nylon rope and it worked very well. Hard to get a good picture of the tip of the rope, but it lightly fused back together with the heat. It would probably need to be heated more on the tip to really fuse it together more before heavy use, but it worked well for making a nice clean cut. For this kind of application I think I would try a larger diameter cutter wire and more juice to get it hotter. Just my thoughts. Haven't tried it.

Thanks for you efforts Marc, and thanks for the pics. It seems to work ok for this purpose - maybe better with some more juice and a thicker wire.
I will pass the word to my son. I'm sure he and I can make some fine tool on basis of your information.
It's worth a try.

Merry Christmas!

Woodie.

Hey Woodie, That's why I use a lighter to lightly touch the ends with... I made all the anchor ropes and pier ropes for my 19' Bayliner, all with no issues!!! I do crank it up to 50amp jump start setting to do this though... works great!!!! Hope this helps... BTW..Great pics Marc... I like doing it this way because it doesn't blacken the ends if you're careful with the lighter!!! I've done this on rope as big as 1/2" for a buddy's boat, which is quiet larger than mine. I called him this weekend to see if he has had any issues with his....No problems.

I've got a kinda high-dollar foam cutter collecting dust in the shop with a broken wire. I thought that I'd need Ni-chrome to replace it with but never really thought about using guitar string! Man, I've got a lot of that around the house! My wife works for a guitar string maker (Dean Markley) so I've got pretty much an unlimited source for it. Anyone else can probably get it for free if you know someone who plays a lot as they're always replacing strings.

Ronald Olson wrote:
Ron, on mine I can adjust the voltage output from the power supply to match the wire used. When I first plugged it in at full voltage (12v) it was way too high and the wire got red hot in a second so I had to dial it down...turned out 5v was about right. I don't know if you can do this with yours, so you might have to do the opposite and try to match the wire to the supply instead. If that's the case I would start with a wire with a diameter quite similar to the original one and take it from there.

Mine came with a "wall wart" power supply and uses an alligator clipped wire that attaches to the cutting wire. I can adust it up or down to help control the amount of heat. This is hard if not impossible to do with the hand-held types unless a long bow style of cutter is made like what the plane guys have for cutting foam wings.
Model train transformers are also great if you're going to do a lot of cutting and need to vary the wire temp.

Hi all.
This idea also works well to set off firecrackers in model warship guns.
My Dad, 35 years ago made a 5' US Coastguard Cutter, and it's rear facing guns use 'Tom Thumb' crackers. Been banned in NZ for 20 years now. He bought up 2000 of them. The guns have ni-crome wire across the back, and servo control takes 6 or 12 volts from a battery. The wire heats up, lights the wicks and a couple of seconds later BANG. Out the barrels fly the cracker cases, and a bit of smoke.