Cutting Foam Hills - Part II

Whew.  Another opportunity to pursue my terrain building came up and I was able to find a wind channel at the side of my house.  I opened the wood gate door and began working on the carving of the 2-inch Styrofoam boards using my rigged-up Weller soldering gun.

Here's what I discovered; the copper wires can get very hot and then begin to warp.  At this point onwards they'll stop conducting heat efficiently.  What I mean is that when I first use the 10-awg wire I was able to carve with it quickly.  After several minutes it becomes a much slower task.  I replaced the wire three times and was able to carve through three pairs of hill contours.

I cut big blocks out of the 2-inch foam boards.
I rushed the cuts by cutting deep about 1-inch
and then snapping the sections apart.

I tried to maintain the cleaner machine-cut edges on
pairs of sections.  These will be used to create either
larger hills or to allow a section as an edge hill.

I numbered my sectioned pairs and tried to savvy
what a sample contour would look like.

Here's one of the smaller single-section hills
that I carved out.  Its just 'okay'.

Top of the hill.  The idea is that I'd stack smaller
hill sections upon the larger ones.

Here's the first of the section pairs.

A close-up.  Notice that I scored the edges of
the hills with the soldering iron to simulate erosion.

This is that same hill above my largest section pair.

Another section pair; a bit triangular.

The same triangular pair split apart.
As mentioned before this allows the hills
to be placed upon the battlefield edges too.