In this week’s Test Tuesday, I am testing Hot Wire Foam Factory’s All Purpose Foam Coat. The product is designed to adhere to polystyrene foams. It is used to achieve a variety of effects such as wood, stone and metal, as well as create a weather and fire resistance surface.
The product is a chalky powder that you mix with water. The directions were very straight forward and clear. I simply used a plastic pallet knife to apply the foam coat to a piece of Readi-Board with the paper removed. (The product is designed to adhere to polystyrene, not paper.) As it dried the texture smoothed out initially, but it was very easy to work the foam coat as it began to set and add more texture or details.
Once dry the foam coat is hard and rigid. I noticed that some of the areas where it had been applied in a thin layer, were a brittle. This is because the single thickness of the foam board beneath is flexed and pulled away from the hardened foam coat. It is worth mentioning that it appears that commonly applications of the foam coat seem to be on thicker foam, and on larger scale projects.
On the left is the still damp foam coat, on the right the dried final texture.
Over all I enjoyed working with this product and I think there is a lot of potentially interesting uses with foam board.
On this sample I removed the letters before applying the foam coat and smoothed it out to have a ripple effect.