Back during my brief tenure at the Mothership, the tool of choice for cutting foam for cases was an electric carving knife.
Yes, Kent! That was a tip we got from Muffy at Jan-Al cases. She told us when they were just starting out that the electric turkey carver was their favorite tool for cutting foam. It really works well,
That'd sure do it. The tool we used at Nashville Custom Case was by Bosch, and I can't for the life of me remember what it's actual purpose was. We used it for more intricate cuts. Most of what we cut was done on a very large bandsaw with a very fine blade. The teeth had practically no set. There was a large layout table to slide larger pieces on that took two or sometimes three of us to manage. We did very few instrument cases, at least not form-fit ones. What we built was trunks on casterboards for touring acts. These things would open from the top, and receive 4-6 hardshell cases in individual slots. Other than that, we built a LOT of shock-mount rack cases for pro-audio rentals. All this just required square cuts of the foam, but a lot of that was what we call high-impact foam. It requires more effort to squish, if that makes sense. Still absorbs impact easily.
And that's what I would actually use to line a roadcase for a bass guitar, at least the outermost layers. If I ever get around to it, I have the Anvil case 1684 came in... that stuff was completely dust and goo behind the velour.
Here's some of what we did-
https://www.nashvillecase.com/*anybody remember the Tascam DA-88? Digital multitrack recorder that was very modular, and very popular in the 90's...? I got back in off the road one time and found one of our bigger customers had ordered 100 shock-mount 4u racks to ship those units all over the planet in. They had to be built with front and back lids, handles on each side, and covered in their favorite color;
RED and stenciled for id. We built those idiot things for two weeks, day in, day out. The only good thing about those cases, they worked like an assembly line. The memory just triggered me!
