When it comes to being organized, it’s hard to beat Kaizen Foam for giving your tools a dedicated home. Kaizen foam is easier to cut and customize than traditional tool foam sheets, but it can still be difficult to do a great job.
FastCap is a company that never stops innovating, and they have come out with a few new tools that might make working with Kaizen foam even easier.
There are two new tools, a Kaizen Foam Scraper that helps smooth cutouts, and a Kaizen Knife Sled that helps with making straight cuts.
Kaizen Foam Scraper
The Kaizen Foam Scraper make it quick and easy to level out a cutout after you’ve peeled back the foam layers. The super-thin blade allows you to work in small or large tool cutouts, just grab the Scraper and flatten the bottom!
Although it’s called a scraper, the tool works more like a shaver, eliminating high spots to create a flat and even recess.
Price: $9.95
Kaizen Foam Knife Sled
The Knife Sled holds a snap-blade utility knife perpendicular to the foam, allowing you to cut the foam at the perfect angle. It holds the knife at a fixed angle but also a fixed depth.
Sure, you don’t need something like this, but making the same cut freehand requires you to hold the utility knife at consistent angles in two directions and at a consistent cutting depth, and you have to maintain control throughout the cut.
Price: $12.50
Although it might work with other utility knives, the sled is specifically designed for Fastcap’s TriBlade utility knife.
Price: $3.63
Kaizen Foam Hot Knife
The Kaizen Foam Hot Knife isn’t a new product, but it’s a versatile Kaizen foam customization tool that’s worth mentioning here.
The hot knife allows you melt the foam to either smooth out a cutout, or to add a nice round finger hold to leverage out tools.
Price: $32.99
Thoughts
I have owned the FastCap hot knife for a while, and when used carefully it certainly adds a better finish to cutouts. Despite Kaizen foam being made of laminated layers of foam, I still find it hard to get a perfectly smooth cutout. It’s particular good at creating thumb sized holes for leveraging out tools. It’s a messy and smelly tool to use, but it does the job effectively.
The scraper looks to be an easier way of smoothing cutouts, and I think it might even replace the use of the hot knife for larger cut outs.
Based on my experience, cutting out sections with a nice perpendicular cut can be a challenge. I normally use a ruler and a knife and whilst the top of the cut is clean, doing this cleanly throughout the full cutting depth is tricky. The sled is a nice and simple solution for that task.
What I like most about the sled is the backstory; it was invented by a FastCap customer who worked with them to bring it to market. In return, they pay out a royalty of 2-5%. It’s a win-win for everyone!
Stuart’s Note: FastCap has a number of other of tools that were developed by independent users and inventors like this!
I purchased both the scraper and the sled and plan to put them through their paces getting my NWS pliers set organized.
