A few days back, it being the Halloween season (at least in America - do other cultures indulge in pagan madness of this sort?) I saw, on some social network or another, a neat carved pumpkin that looked like, I kid you not, R2-D2 from "Star Wars."

It looked quite neat and I have never been a pumpkin carving guy, outside the stuff I do with the kids, but it seemed like a fun idea and a way to do something with the kids.

However, R2-D2 was a little out of my league, having no experience in any sort of real carving, but the fellow who did it also had other projects he had done and he was quite gracious about putting them online and giving descriptions of the tools and at least the general outline of how it was done and the techniques involved.

First, take a look at the stuff this guy does.    

Pretty terrific, right?   Obviously I lack the skill or the practice to pull off that Fantasia thing and I would have to be a little more clever with a clay loop and a Speedball tool to not mess up an R2-D2, so I tackled the Death Star instead.    It's round and the key points are a big trench for Luke Skywalker to shoot torpedos into and some big laser hole thing - I could pull that off.

It took about 9 hours, I suppose, given my slowness at first due to general hesitation, like worrying about scraping right through the shell, but once I got going it was easier.  There are plenty of defects but not much I can do about that now.   As you'll see, I wasn't recreating the actual Death Star, I just wanted something my kids could look at and say 'hey, that's the Death Star'.   

So here it is, Hank's Death Star pumpkin.    Instead of being basically a circle like on his tutorial, I left an inch or so of pumpkin wall where the laser hole thing would be and beveled it down toward the laser to give it a 3-D effect.    Tomorrow I will go to the store and get some of those "Lite-brite" things that flicker with candle light and I'll see if I can rustle up a tiny X-Wing fighter to put near that trench.

Carve your own stuff with patterns at FantasyPumpkins.com and thanks to Noel Dickover there for taking the time to make pumpkin carving cool, even for newbies.

I didn't carve it all the way around because I couldn't find a truly round pumpkin of the size I wanted and because there will be candles inside it needs air so I will have to cut a hole in the back, but where it will be sitting no one can see the back anyway.   This was taken with me shining a flashlight in the top.