Have you ever wanted to fit something securely into a box or drawer but didn’t have the time, skill, or inclination to go the traditional French Fit style?  Well then, you need to know about Kaizen Foam.  Before I switched to WordPress from Blogger I published a post regarding this material.  In it I used the foam to make inserts in my tool chest for my dovetail saws and planes.  Crazy stuff, check out this LINK to that blog.

We recently joined up with the 21st. century and purchased cell phones.  One of the many things that lead up to this decision was the recent art festival and needing a way to take payments at an event like that.  I’m sold on the iPhone 5C that we both got and will find more uses for it the longer I have it.  One of the really neat features is being able to get turn by turn directions.  We have a Garmin but it’s so old that it was beyond updating so these will replace that without any problem except where to put the darn thing when you’re driving.

Nevada has a “no-phone” law so holding wasn’t an option even if I could put up with the distraction.  After doing a web search for various ways to hold your phone in the car I decided to go to Best Buy and see things first hand.  Not wanting to attach a suction cup to the windshield and having it interfere with my vision plus bake in the sun that wasn’t an option.  I chose a suction cup device and after settling on a fairly good location for it, stuck it on in the parking lot.  Well, three turns out of the lot and two tumbles off of the dash it was time for a refund and some head scratching.  As you can see in the picture, the console on the Tacoma has a rectangular opening next to the shift.  Good place for change but the phone moves too much in there.  Didn’t care too much for the sound of it banging against the sides.  As I was driving home it dawned on me that I have some of the foam left over and maybe I could do the Dutch guy solution (thrifty not cheap!) and make it work.  This photo shows how it looks from the passenger side.

The solution was surprisingly simple.  After cutting the foam to fit snugly into the rectangular opening of the console and reducing its thickness it was a matter of tracing the phone and cutting it out.  There aren’t any in progress photo’s but I put a layer of tape on the foam so I could trace the outline of the phone.  Next up the depth was cut on the side that would be closest to the driver followed by making a slanted cut to tilt the phone into my line of vision.  The foam cuts easily and I added a slightly deeper cut at the bottom of the angle to help secure the phone.  I gave it the “swerving around the parking lot” test and it stayed in place!  Inexpensive solution to a 21st. Century dilemma!

Kaizen Foam with iPhone