Even here in Texas now, there’s a snap to the air and leaves are falling. The holiday season begins for many folks at Halloween. Pumpkin carving and punkin’ chunkin’ are both traditions this time of year — of course, punkin’ chunkin’ being more of full-contact affair with lots of gratuitous ground-on-punkin’ action and punkin’ explosions, and pumpkin carving being a more “traditional” art with faces and such being carved into rinds.
You be the judge: Do you favor the balistics of the chunkin’ arts?
– Or the raw satisfaction of making others laugh and squirm in their boots with your clever renditions of the halloween spirit? We’ve made a go with the Dremel in the last few years and done a passable job. The drought this year has brought a sort of dearth of pumpkins, so it may be a plastic light-up unit for Halloween 2011.
Regardless of the tools, the outcome is a good time. Personally I’m probably more wired to carve a pumpkin and just watch the raw power of the chunkin’ machines but that’s just me. How about you — do you have a great chunker in the backyard or a sliced-up orange masterpiece on the front stoop? Let us know in comments (and photos, if you got ‘em).
Cordless Pumpkin Carving Tool [Dremel]
Best Carving Practices [Toolmonger]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]
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3 Responses to Pumpkin Carving or Punkin’ Chunkin’?
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Punkin Chunkin! But, I’m biased, I live in DE.
The event, which started out on a whim, is pretty cool to see in person (yes, I went, once). TV doesn’t do it justice.
Some of the engineering involved in trying to shoot a pumpkin a mile is cool.
How difficult are those plastic-foam pumpkins to carve like the photo above? I figure cutting holes in them is easy enough, but is it more difficult to do good translucency/shading in those than it is in a real pumpkin? Being able to re-use a plastic one for several years has its appeal.
cl
I usually just carve an actual pumpkin with a knife, but last year it was easier to just spray paint some gourds.
I’d be all about some punkin chunkin though, but don’t live anywhere close to where they hold that stuff. Perhaps one day. It’s always great to see people applying hardcore engineering to stuff that doesn’t involve killing other human beings. Though you have to wonder if anyone was ever taken out by one of those flying punkins.
@Chris
The fake ones have some advantages over the real thing, but there is a learning curve if you’re used to real ones. I would go with fake stuff if they are much cheaper and leave the real ones for people who will use them for pies and such, especially if there is a shortage.
The only problem I have with the fake stuff is they seem to be made in..you guessed it…CHINA. Figures. Next thing you know we’ll be eating China-made synthetic Turkey.