I mentioned in a previous post that my family has a big pumpkin-carving tradition for Halloween. (I’m still cleaning up! Hence, the belated nature of this post.) I’d like to share two significant ways the Glowforge helped with our project this year.
First, we have learned that it is important to scrape the inside of the pumpkin to the correct thickness for the best carving results. (The pumpkin flesh should be between one and 1.5 inches thick.) For years I have declared, “I need calipers!” This year, with the help of my Glowforge, I made a set of pumpkin calipers from proofgrade fluorescent acrylic. It took the guesswork out of the scraping process.
Second, creating stencils using the Glowforge is a breeze, and it saves a ton of time transferring the patterns to the pumpkins. We use a lot of patterns from Zombie Pumpkins, our favorite source for traditional cut-out designs. I love that I can load the pdfs directly into the Glowforge user interface. Here’s one of the Zombie Pumpkin designs, cut into a stencil using the 20 lb. copy paper setting. I used a Seklema mat to avoid flyaways.
We also do sculpted designs where you don’t cut through to the center. The calipers came in handy for these as well, since the pumpkin wall needs to be thinned enough to let light through.
Wow! Nice application of your laser, and a slick new tool in my favorite acrylic.
That photographic one is a real artwork, you put some time into that!
This year we carved 68 pumpkins. For my contribution to the display, I wanted to honor my dad, who passed away in September. I converted the design I used for the paper cut shadow box I made for him a couple of years ago into a pumpkin-carving pattern, and I changed the corn field to a pumpkin patch.
Nice application of your laser, and a slick new tool in my favorite acrylic.
