The Five Best Ways to Cut a Pumpkin

Cutting into a pumpkin is no easy task. The average depth of a rine to a pumpkin is well over an inch and it can give you a hard time. Often, you pushed a little too hard, sending that blade that you chose out of the kitchen drawer, into the left eye, while trying to cut out the right one. More often then not, most people these days would rather draw on their pumpkin rather than taking the risk to destroy another five dollar melon.
Well draw no more. These well-chosen secrets used by my family over the years, have created some of the best pumpkin designs and have also won a few contests. Here I am to share some of these well-guarded secrets of old, (sorry, mom).

Drills

Drills have became, in my family, one of the top utensils to use when carving out a pumpkin. Over the last few eras since we started carving professionally, drills have became handheld, and the ones that are cordless make the best tool for the job. The size you use makes no importance if you are using this technique to just make that size hole. If you are going to use this technique to draw out the pattern though, smallest is best. Just remember, if you push into it too hard, the rine of the pumpkin can break the drill bit.
Hint: This technique is not used for angles, but some of us are more into detail than most. If the crescent-shaped corners don't bother you much, you can do the whole pumpkin this way.

Miniature sawzalls

Another tool that has been seen laying around the table during pumpkin carving around my house is the well-defined reciprocating saws. This tool has cut through hours of torture by cutting through that "Orange Monster". During the last twenty years, Black &Decker, Sears, and other retails have invented the best tools for any custom pumpkin carver. These tools are called the portable power tools. This is also where you"ll find that miniature reciprocating saw, otherwise known as a "Sawzall". With this tool you"ll need just one piece of advise when it come to the saw blade size: The closer the teeth are to each other, the finer the detail.

Router

The router came into our family much later, when someone noticed that instead of using a sander to get rid of the skin, (and yes, there are tricks that have came and gone along that were worse than a sander, ) he was getting a better look by using a router. Routers are one of the easiest tools to find because any router would do. it's the depth you have to worry about here.

Skewers

The most commonly used tool used in the art of making a pattern stick to the pumpkin is the poker. Pokers are fine, but often mine would fall out and the hole a poker made was usually bigger than the one I wanted in my pumpkin.
While some have tried to actually glue the pattern in place, they are often challenged by the ability to keep the pattern from ripping and sliding. The women in my family came up with a better idea on how to hold the pattern in place. They were starting to use skewers. They would just send the skewer through the pattern, then let the skewer catch the inside of the pumpkin, keeping the pattern in place. No more sliding patterns and often, the skewers didn't do enough damage to see on the inside of the pumpkin.

Dremels

Dremels have became the choice of tool to use to cut out a pattern for a pumpkin. with the 500+ attachments you can get with any dremel, pumpkin carvers everywhere have been experimenting with different designs for years. While a dremel kit does save time, skilled hands are definately required to keep the dremel from eating away at the pumpkin itself. Yes, this is a great tool, but during the last five years, we all noticed that the first four tools that I have chosen rate higher than a dremel.

So do your self a favor this year. try to cut the pumpkin instead of drawing it this year. Using at least one of my techniques, you"ll soon catch the "pumpkin-carving bug" and will want to buy more pumpkins. Who knows, you might even be the next one to find that extra special tool to put all the other pumpkins to shame.