Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Extreme Pumpkins Require Extreme Tools


It's October. It's Autumn. A chill is in the air. Halloween, AAPEX, SEMA, and the NACE Shows are right around the corner. I found this website sometime last year, and since I love Halloween and all things Jack-O-Lantern-y, I bookmarked it. Tom Nardone is the king of extreme pumpkin-carving, and here are the tools he recommends: (My apologies ahead of time to any specific tool maker who might be offended by Tom's opinions. I think he has a great sense of humor - and I love his Jack-O-Lanterns!)

Lifted directly from his website, with slight editing:

Tools for Terror

Here is some great advice on how to easily carve a pumpkin using power tools. I prefer tools that can make pumpkin carving go quickly because I am lazy.


My favorite Pumpkin Slashing Tool: The Jigsaw.

A regular kitchen knife is a piss-poor choice if you need to quickly carve a pumpkin. The holes that you create are so uninteresting. Beginners will only be able to make square holes using just a knife. Creative types could make triangles, but circles are pretty much impossible. Certainly if we want to write a message on our pumpkin, we need a different tool.

Why doesn’t everyone just use a jigsaw to carve pumpkins? Jigsaws make nice smooth curves and quick cuts. You can start a jigsaw anywhere. Just plunge the blade into the pumpkin and pull the trigger. The blade goes in and out of the pumpkin so easily it is as if you were cutting a lump of jell-o. Even the smallest jigsaw has plenty of power to slice and dice. I do suggest getting the longest blade you can to make your work easier. It is amazing that more pumpkin carvers don’t use power tools.

For Heavy Work: The Reciprocating Saw (Sawzall).

If you were a pumpkin carver in a place where the pumpkins are larger, you might want to choose a reciprocating saw as your weapon of choice. Unlike jigsaws, which have short blades, reciprocating saws can often handle blades 10 or more inches long. A long blade can easily cut through the biggest pumpkin or take the stem-cap off the orneriest pumpkin.

If you happen to grow one of those humungous pumpkins, a sawzall is the only tool to use to carve it. A sawzall will allow you to carve intricate designs on even the largest vegetable. By using a reciprocating saw you can save time too. It will only take you 5 to ten minutes to carve a huge pumpkin. Sawzalls kick butt.

For Flaying: A Router.

In order to be a master pumpkin carver, you don’t need a great vocabulary but lets review one important term: flay. If you were a mass-murderer and your specialty was removing all of the skin from your victims’ bodies you would be flaying them. That is your new word for today, to flay.

If you wanted to flay a pumpkin for a lighting effect when you place a high powered light inside them, I suggest you use a router. A router will let you set the depth of material you remove from the outside of the pumpkin.

By removing just the skin from the outside you can let some of the light from within diffuse outward. This creates a cool, creepy glow.

Clean Up The Crime Scene: A Power-Washer

Pumpkin guts attract flies and get sticky over the course of a day or so. I like to cleanse the grime scene with a power washer. I use only the strongest trash bags as well. I don’t like to drop any pumpkin guts on my way to the curb.

For Detail Work: A Boning or Filet Knife

Let’s face it, when you want to create fine detail, you need something more delicate that a jigsaw. That is when I grab a boning knife. It is long and thin enough to slide into any cut and pop out the chunks of pumpkin pulp.

For Goop Removal: A Big Spoon

Pumpkins are full of goop. Removing that goop goes faster if you have a bigger spoon. I like one made of metal to scrape the guts from the inside of the pumpkin. It is about the same size spoon that the lunch-lady in the high school cafeteria uses.

Tools that don’t work so well:

As an experienced pumpkin carver, I have tried a number of tools. Some don’t work very well. You can save yourself some trouble by not using these.

A dremel tool or roto-zip: The fibrous nature of pumpkins make it difficult to hold rotary tools in a straight line. You can hack-up a pumpkin, but it is difficult to leave them looking artistic.

Torches, plasma-cutters, any flame cutters: Since a pumpkin is made mostly of water, it can’t be burned easily. Don’t worry though, the fact that they don’t burn allows you to light giant fires inside their head without burning down your porch

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