A very novice jack-o-lantern question

Factual Questions
1

How much of the pumpkin guts are you supposed to remove? We just scooped out the semi-loose stringy stuff and all the seeds, then carved the holes through the stuff that clung to the rind. Is that right? Or should I hack away at the solid stuff, too?

Forgive me. My mother thought real jack-o-lanterns were fire hazards and wasted food, so we had plastic electric ones, in finest '70s style. Now I’m trying to give the little flodnaks a thrill, but nobody in Norway knows any more than I do about this…

2

If it’s solid, it’s ok. You just don’t want any of the mushy stuff remaining. It sounds as if you’re on the right track.

One other tip is to carve out some of the solid stuff at the bottom a bit to hold your candle securely.

3

It sounds like what you’re doing is about right. So long as you’re not risking setting anything on fire with the candle, you should be OK.

4

Ah, this is from a veteran pumpkin carver - You want to scrape the solid stuff too until it is only about one inch (2.5 cms.)thick in the area you want to carve. If you leave it too thick, not much light comes through the carving when you put the candle in.

5

From our “Master Carver™” pumpkin carving kit, the recommendation is leaving one inch of rind to work with. I’ve always scooped out the looser stuff and scaped out just enough of the inner wall to remove the slicker snot-like stuff. :stuck_out_tongue:
Also we came across the tip of applying petroleum jelly to the cut parts of the pumpkin to help preserve it longer.

6

Flodnak, normally you don’t worry about removing the pumpkin’s solid flesh–just the seeds and strings. Some jack-o-lantern carving specialists insist on hollowing out the thing to where it’s the 1" (or even less) thickness mentioned by ejrn, but for Norwegian Newbies, just take the icky parts out. You don’t need the whole globe to be glowing, you just want a candle behind the face.

The only reason to be really meticulous about removing all the goop is if you’re carving your pumpkin way ahead of time. The goop is what rots first, so if you’re carving punkins on October 15, you wanna scrape it out good, get it really dry inside. But hey, Halloween’s tomorrow. You can stop scraping when your “Icky Meter” goes over the redline. :smiley:

And, what Delphica said about a flat bottom for the candle–it actually works better to put the candle in something like a jar lid (stick it down with a few drops of melted wax) and then carefully lower the jar lid into the pumpkin. And candle stubs, about 3" long, work better than longer candles. A longer candle is harder to lower into the punkin, and it bumps on the lid and just burns it, and doesn’t provide adequate illumination behind the face.

A pumpkin that has a good solid stem for grabbing the lid is nice, too. Purchase no punkins without handles. :smiley: Do you need instructions for how to make a lid? The important thing when cutting jack-o-lanterns, is always to go at right angles to the pumpkin’s flesh. “Go straight in,” is what I tell my kids. “Don’t slant.” So make your lid cuts as “straight-in” at right angles to the pumpkin’s flesh as you can, all the way around. (Draw the line first, with a permanent Magic Marker). Is this making sense? You should end up with a lid that’s a truncated cone. In other words, you don’t just slice the top off the pumpkin like slicing the top off a pineapple. If you do that, the lid won’t stay put, it’ll keep sliding off onto the floor.

Tips for cutting the faces, after you’ve got it hollowed out, and the lid cut: Draw the design first with a Magic Marker (permanent, not washable, because it won’t stick). Then use a kitchen knife with about a 1" blade, and flat, not serrated, and go straight in. Stick with simple geometrical shapes, except for circles. Circles are a bastard to cut, pardon my French. Squares for eyes, triangle for the nose, a very simple “jagged square teeth” kind of jack-o-lantern smile.

Keep the finished Jack-O-Lanterns at cold temperatures, like lower than 60 F., but do not allow to freeze.

All the best to the Little Flodnaks.

7

Ah, I forgot the most important hint:

The lid will only want to fit one certain way into the pumpkin, so when you take it off to re-light the candle, it’s aggravating to have to figure out which way the lid fits. You stand there twirling it around, “This way? No. This way? No…”

So, put the lid in place and mark where it goes with a permanent marker. Just make a mark, across the crack, between the lid and the body of the pumpkin. This makes it much easier to replace the lid and get it in the right spot so it’ll stay put. Just match up the marks.

8

Here in the states they sell a pumpkin carving kit. It consists of a pointy thing,a pushpin type thumbtack will work,several templates,and several saw blades. They are the type used in a coping saw but with a straight handle like a pen.You saw the unwanted pumpkin parts out.You can get pretty creative with them.

9

[hj]
DDG, might I quickly say that you’re an incredible help at EVERYTHING! You offer the best advice on everything from carving pumkins to dealing with life’s adversities. You amaze me.
[/hj]

10

Perhaps I had better explain the pointy thing.
Instead of drawing on the pumpkin you put the template,just a piece of paper with a design,face,scene,etcthat you want to carve into your pumpkin . Just make pin pricks along the lines you want to cut through the paper into the pumpkin. Remove the template and saw along the pinpricks.

11

A little off topic, but here is my tip. I too am apprehensive about leaving an unattended candle burning. So instead of a candle, I use 3 or 4 light-sticks. In fact, I bought a package of them on EBAY and got some that are orange. This really works well.

12

Do you always cut all of the way through, or is there a way to leave a thin layer of the lighter inner shell so that it is translucent?

13

If you have an apple corer on hand you can get very sexy circles. Of course, you are stuck with only one size circle but it looks good.

Another method is to cut a small notch while circumcising the top off the pumpkin. This leaves a good visual clue to reassemble the pumpkin.

14

Another method is to cut a small notch while circumcising the top off the pumpkin. This leaves a good visual clue to reassemble the pumpkin. **
[/QUOTE]

Yet another method is to make the lid a funny shape–a rhombus, say–so that it’s immediately obvious how to put it back in.

Also, I don’t worry too much about how thick the pumpkin is. If it’s too thick, it’s true that the overhang of pumpkin meat will block the candle light (I’m having trouble describing what I mean here) but in those cases I take a knife and trim away just the stuff that’s blocking the light from shining through the holes.

And don’t forget to roast the pumpkin seeds! The elder lestrangelet has been waiting all year just for the seeds. Well, okay, the candy is pretty high on the list, too.

15

My tip: don’t cut the top off at all. Instead, we cut a quadrilateral on the bottom. You then lift the whole pumpkin off the bottom, put a candle there, and then place the pumpkin back down. This avoids burning fingers and (far worse) arm hair.

16

Shibboleth:

If you’re really patient (read: “anal” :smiley: ), yes, you can have the pumpkin really thin. But it takes incredible patience to keep scooping out the flesh (try a melon baller), getting it thinner and thinner, going around and around, and it’s extremely fragile, so you have to support it with the other hand. Then you end up with a hollow shell that’s just the thinnest layer of pumpkin flesh held together by the brittle outer rind, and as soon as you set it down a little too hard, it cracks.

Most of us not-so-anal punkin carvers just grab a kitchen knife, let the pumpkin chips fall where they may, stick a candle in there, and pronounce it good. :smiley:

17

Some ice cream scoopers work well.

Do not put the top on while the candle is lit.

18

Okay, I bought my carving kit at lunch, referenced here and some other websites for hints, and will buy a few pumpkins on the way home in a few minutes. Then the Olethlings[sup]TM[/sup] will experience their first pumpkin carving. We will start simple and work up from there.

As per Dinsdale[sup]*[/sup]'s comment, the sites I have read suggest using a short candle and “venting” the top of the pumpkin so that the heat can escape. They say the jack-o-lantern is often cooked from the inside by the candle heat, thus the mushiness. We will try tonight with a short candle and the lid on.

If any of these turn out well I will take some digital fotos and post them in MPSIMS with a link from here.

Thanks to everyone for all of the advice.

[sup]*Does Spiny Norman ever chase you about the boards?[/sup]

19

Actually a candle in a pumpkin is really a safe light source as long as it is nested so it({CAN NOT}) tip over.

FWIW we always put the lid on out pumpkins when lit.It just smells like cooked pumpkin.

20

Try cutting a small hole in the back and inserting a red light bulb on a cord (we use an old trouble light with the protective cage removed). The hole should be big enough for the socket but smaller than the bulb, so there’s no risk of it falling out. Used with orange tissue paper loosely tucked against the carved side as a light diffuser, it’s quite effective, and no fire risk/candle blowing out/singed hand. You just have to make sure the cord is tucked out of the way so no half-blinded masked trick-or-treater trips over it.