Cutting Foam Roller Covers

[ealger]

I finally found some West System 800 foam roller covers as Ron Tait discussed some time ago.
1) How does one cut them in half so they don't shed junk?
2) West talks about splitting them to form a kind of brush to tip off epoxy. What are the thoughts on this?
Ed..

[Glen Smith]

To cut those rollers in half you can tightly wrap some plastic around the roller and use masking tape to hold it on. Then make a tight wrap of masking tape at mid-length. Make the cut through the masking tape, plastic and roller and it should be cut clean when you remove the tape and plastic.

To make a tipping-off brush or actually 3 of them you just slit half a roller in 3 pieces lengthwise. I use a small spring clamp to hold it on the edge and the clamp serves as the handle. You could also staple it to a short piece of wood or make a slit in a short piece of wood and push the roller piece into the slit. I find the spring clamp works well and if I want to replace the roller piece I just open the clamp over the trash can and the gunky roller piece falls in. :eyebrows

I have a problem with tipping-off though. They say to use a clean, dry brush or roller cover piece to tip off. Well, as soon as you start using it, it is no longer clean and dry :rolling eyes

[davidb54321]

Ed, I cut mine with my band saw. Worked great. I just used the throwaway brushes for tipping off. Much less expensive!

[Bassbug]

After cutting mine with a hacksaw once, and a fine toothed backsaw another time, most recently I used a sharp knife. No junk shed!

[Fred G]

band saw

Buy the foam brushes for tipping off. sometimes the big bags are on sale. then I stock up. I use a lot of foam brushes for paddle building with polyurethane glue. I need lots of 1 inchers for that, so between the paddles and boats I can use all the brushes in a bag.

[Rod Tait]

I use the roller covers for almost everything except for tip off brushes as West suggests. I think that is a little too expensive. Buy a lot of cheap brushes at a dollar store or use foam brushes.

[ealger]

Thanks all for the replies. I covered one with plastic wrap and a piece of masking tape at the center. Then cut through the tape and foam cover with a razor blade. Then cut the tube with a serrated knife which didn't cut clean and left pieces of torn fibre core. I picked this off. The foam is clean, however.

There must be a better way to cut the covers cleanly.

But, cover junk was not my worst enemy on my last coat. Seems that the static from vacuuming the sanded epoxy made a lot of dust stick to the hull which showed up worse than my bubbles I've been fighting.
Ed..

[Glen Smith]

Ed, in my above message I forgot to mention that I cut the rollers on the bandsaw with a fine-tooth blade, very clean cut.

[ealger]

OK Glen thanks. I'll experiment somemore as I need to cut the covers.
Ed..