The next evening, we had some friends over for dinner. I tried the transformer again, but it was truly fried. I switched to yet another transformer, an even more powerful 12 volt, 1 amp model from a portable television.

I connected it up to my washer-top rig and the new power showed itself immediately. The wire was bright red and I slid some styrofoam toward it. Much better!

This new hot wire was slicing through, twice as fast, making a nice sizzling sound. Nick and Eric were my appreciative audience.

I was a little worried about burning something out again, so I worked fast, finishing up the rest of the shapes.

The next step was to use these styrofoam bases to build thicker, interlocking blocks. My first idea was to pin little paper curtains around them and to fill them with expanding foam.

The goal was blocks which were about six inches thick, with a rounded top.

I wanted to limit the total number of expanding foam cans I needed, so I considered some small balloons as filler.

Not long after taking this photo, I abandoned the small balloon idea and used pancakes of crumpled newspaper instead.

I shouldn't have been surprised at how meager the output of one can turned out to be. I calculated I would need at least five more cans.

Maybe I shouldn't have held the can upside down...

If I was going to invest $30 in expanding foam, I thought I would get a bigger bang out of 2-part mix-it-yourself foam in cans from Tap Plastics.

The woman at the counter asked if I had ever used this stuff before. She wanted to make sure I knew that it expanded like crazy and set solid very, very quickly. I guess she had had a few complaints about how little time there was to work with it.

To use it, I filled two disposible disposable cups with an equal amount of each chemical component. See. Equal!

Then I combined them in a third cup for mixing. Don't confuse these three with your fourth cup, the one filled with red wine.

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