Any styrofoam tips?

Hello!

This site has gotten me interested in an old project I never quite got finished and I had a few questions.

I am going to be making several layers out of styrofoam and was wondering what the best finishing techniques were.

Does any one have any suggestions on coating material or sanding techniques once everything is finished being cut to a rough shape?

Thanks for any information and patience as I'm sure I'll have more questions farther on down the road.

Thats a broad range of possibilities. What type of styrofoam, what size, whats the final end goal...

Expanded polystyrene.

6" by 6" by 3" for the most part.

Cutting and sanding to make an initial master for a mold.

I'm not a wood worker and do not have the tools so I thought this would be an easier material to start with.

The end goal is pieces from the Dr. Who key to time. I gave it a try a few years ago but wasn't happy with my first cast piece and got a bit frustrated and lost interest, to be perfectly honest. I saw one completed on here in the material I had used previously which gave me a bit of hope and enthusiasm. I imagine it will lead to more casting questions but that is for way later. 1 thing at a time.

Finding this place has gotten me looking in to modifying my approach into smaller steps that will hopefully be more easily manageable for me.

for me foam I hot wire cut it sand to shape as smooth as I can then coat with Dunham's wood puddy then re sand when dry then any bondo on that to finish the detail. if you put bondo on the foam it eats it

I got a little pot of foam putty from woodland cenics that I used on my first attemt.

Some of the pieces are kinda big so I think part of the issue the first time round was trying to do them all as one big piece. So this time I'm spliting each piece into 3 layers. I hopeing that by taking smaller bites out of it I will have enough scooch room to do more finishing work that I did on my first attempt.

Thank you for the input!