[vaderknightrider]

They say that the hardest part of carving is cleaning out the guts!?!?!?

I don't know, but I can clean a pumpkin out in about 5-10 minutes with just a PM scoop.

[Pumpkin King]

If your only gutting one pumpkin the PM scraper is fine, but if your going to carve a large number of pumpkins in one day or over the course of the carving season hands down you need the monster scoop. It saves you time, as well as wear on your wrists from all the scooping.

[Tkaraoke]

Not to sound like a total weenie-boy but I'd be afraid that plastic scoop would snap while I was scraping. I've always looked at the PM tools as being a little on the "kiddie" side and I'm always looking for the Tim "The Toolman" Taylor MORE POWER method!

[cyberdman]

That is exactly how I feel. I think this is the way to go if you quickly are cleaning out a large number of pumpkins.

[Tkaraoke]

One of my least favorite part of carving (next to gutting and scraping) is cutting the top off to get to the innards. Taking a cue from extremepumpkins.com, I think I'm going to use a power jigsaw to get the job done. I would think that should get the job done and done fast. I can't stand making a cut, taking the blade out, then putting back in and making another cut, etc....

[Steve-o]

For lid carving I think some of the saws from the non-PM kits do the quickest work of it. You don't have to be overly neat, the teeth are big enough and seperated enough to make the job fairly easy . . . at least in my opinion.

[cyberdman]

I can't stand making a cut, taking the blade out, then putting back in and making another cut, etc....

You sound like Linus.

"I didn't know you were going to kill it!!!"

[Tkaraoke]

I usually use a very large kitchen knife to do the job. Sometimes the blade would flex which made me nervous. I moved onto a large blade and that did a job on the pumpkin but I was still doing the "Pumpkin Lid Tango". LOL

I could be making something into a much bigger problem that it really is.

[cyberdman]

No, I know what you are saying. It just sounded funny to me for some reason.

[Pumpkin King]

The Pumpkin Master 4 in one tool does a fairly decent job on cutting out pumpkin lids.

[Kittie]

They say that the hardest part of carving is cleaning out the guts!?!?!?

I don't know, but I can clean a pumpkin out in about 5-10 minutes with just a PM scoop.

Yeah by far, that is the hardest, most tiring part. The rest is just tedious. When you have to gut 30 pumpkins. . . It takes a long long time. You have to gut them and then scrap them down to a 1 inch or less thick rind to have a nice pumpkin.

[Angel]

I've never had a problem with using the PM scraper to gut my pumpkins, but I picked up a Monster Scoop while I was at Michael's yesterday. It might take me a while to get used to the size.

[Joey]

So I picked one up this morning to try out on my first pumpkin of the year, and I didn't have that good a time with it. Probably because my lids tend to be smaller then usual, and the pumpkin itself was small, but I just couldn't get a good scraping grip on it. I went back to my good old Halloween Works scraper. So yeah, not the coolest experience.

I'm not giving up yet though, I'll try it out again when the bigger pumpkins start showing up, and I'll try and make my lids bigger.

[znexo]

the BEST scrapper tool EVER is a ceramic loop tool.

Restoration Hardware had a fancy carving kit on sale a few years back and this tool was included. it has a blade on both sides and works wonders at scrapping away the insides of a pumpkin.

little did i know it's actually a ceramics tool. i found that out while taking wheel throwing this semester.

[Pumpkin King]

I forgot I use them on occasion to scap out the inside or it I am etching a large area on a pumpkin I may use a small loop, or squared off version of a cermaic loop. Also useful is a metal pointer that comes in most ceramic kits for trimming excess clay, marking, etc. For pumpkins it makes a really good poker.