Pumpkin carving 101

It seems that this year I’m being roped into pumpkin carving.  I have never tried such a thing before but want to wow everyone with my l33t skillz.  What do I need to know?  Do I need special tools or will a paring knife, ahem, cut it?

Also, why not share designs from this year / years past on here too.

Stanley knife, drill and padsaw for me. Ooh, and Pinterest for my ‘original’ ideas.

At the very minimum, you’re going to need a 5-axis cnc machine.

Lets be like the Frickin Mericans  and their Halloween excess.

A scary 18,000 tonnes of uneaten pumpkins are thrown away each year in the UK, according to waste management company Waste Managed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgq8z8w1kxvo

Give the kids (and Cougar) some Neeps to carve out in to lanterns,that’l learn em. 😉 🙂

Pumpkin or Trumpkin ?

He is the orange one.

Prep like you’re disposing of a body put down a plastic sheet or newspapers, lots of bin bags for the left over material, old clothes or Aprons.

Draw what you want to do on first in sharpie, so you have something to follow.

Take the top off first and scoop out seeds and stuff before you carve

Serrated blade on my SAK does a better job than a really sharp knife (which is more likely to cut your now slippery pumpkin pulp covered fingers).

There’s no point if you don’t put a couple of tealights inside.

Make sure you dispose of them within 24 hrs, they will start to rot fast (if you’re smart and have the energy you’ll clean them off as soon as the kids go to bed, chop down into chunks and freeze to use in soups later).

We used to do a pumpkin carving event each year, where kids would draw their designs onto the pumpkin that we would then carve for them (can’t hand out sharp things to the ickle ones you monster) as they did a ‘Halloween trail’ through the Castle grounds.

It was one of those things that made Halloween genuinely scary – it would mean me, and if lucky one other person, almost chained to the kitchen (at least the pumpkins were deseeded and scooped) carving them, one after the other, for 5 hours straight with perhaps a 15 minute break. ‘Kin nightmare.

If you want to do one of those fancy ones with the contrast of light from the deskinned part you’ll have to remove quite a lot of the internal flesh. Which can be problematic.

Also, consider cutting the bottom of the pumpkin out so you can lower it over the tealight/candle – it makes it easier to change candles if needs be.

Stops it caving in as well if you’re using it for more than one night.

Prep like you’re disposing of a body put down a plastic sheet or newspapers, lots of bin bags for the left over material, old clothes or Aprons.

Is not a line I expected to read at 8am on a Monday morning.