Tools for Terror - My Attempt at Being Funny About What Tools To Use

This is one of the first things I wrote. I wanted to spice-up the description of what tools worked best. It needed more work. Here is the first cut at it. After the book went to press, I rewrote this section and sold it to MAKE magazine for an article. I was pretty psyched because I subscribe to MAKE.

Tools for Terror

 

Here is some great advice on how to commit a gruesome murder and dispose of the body easily carve a pumpkin using power tools.  I prefer tools that can cut through flesh and bone quickly make pumpkin carving go quickly because I am lazy. 

 

My favorite Pumpkin Slashing Tool:  The Jigsaw.

A regular kitchen knife is a piss-poor choice if you need to kill someone quickly carve a pumpkin. The stabbing process is so slow and the holes that you create are so uninteresting.  Beginners will only be able to make square holes using just a knife.  Creative types could make triangles, but circles are pretty much impossible. Certainly if we want to write a message on the flesh of our victim pumpkin we need a different tool.

 

Why doesn’t everyone just use a jigsaw to murder innocent people carve pumpkins.  Jigsaws make nice smooth curves and quick cuts.  You can start a jigsaw anywhere.  Just plunge the blade into the flesh and pull the trigger. The blade goes in and out of the flesh so easily it is as if you were cutting a lump of jell-o.  Even the smallest jigsaw has plenty of power to slice and dice.  I do suggest getting the longest blade you can to make your work easier.  It is amazing that more mass murderers pumpkin carvers don’t use power tools.

 

For Heavy Work:  The Reciprocating Saw (Sawzall).

If you were a mass-murderer pumpkin carver in a place like Samoa or Wisconsin where people the pumpkins are larger, you might want to choose a reciprocating saw as your weapon of choice.  Unlike jigsaws, which have short blades, reciprocating saws can often handle blades 10 or more inches long.  A long blade can easily cut through the entire abdomen of a grown man take the stem-cap off the orneriest pumpkin. 

 

If you happen to kill a very large person buy or grow one of those humungous pumpkins, a sawzall is the only tool to use to carve it.  A sawzall will allow you to carve two Christmas hams from their thighs intricate designs on even the largest vegetable. By using a reciprocating saw you can save time too.  It will only take you 5 to ten minutes to dismember an entire human body and put it in the dumpster behind the Olive Garden carve a huge pumpkin.  Sawzalls kick butt. 

 

For Flaying:  A Router.

In order to be a mass-murderer, you don’t need a great vocabulary but lets review some important terms.  If you were a mass-murderer and your specialty was removing all of the skin from your victims’ bodies you would be flaying them.  That is your new word for today, to flay. 

 

If you wanted to flay a people pumpkins for a lighting effect when you place a high powered light inside them, I suggest you use a router.  A router will let you set the depth of material you remove from the outside of the pumpkin. 

 

By removing just the skin from the outside you can let some of the light from within diffuse outward.  This creates a cool, creepy glow.

 

Clean Up The Crime Scene:  A Power-Washer

Pumpkin guts are similar to human guts in that they attract flies and get sticky over the course of a day or so.  I like to cleanse the grime scene with a power washer. I use only the strongest trash bags as well.  I don’t like to drop any body parts pumpkin guts on my way to the curb. 

 

For Detail Work:  A Boning or Filet Knife

Let’s face it, when you want to dig out an eyeball, you need something more delicate that a jigsaw.  I mean, a jigsaw can cut out the eye socket well, but when you have to remove the actual chunk of eyeball, sometimes it doesn’t just pop out.  That is when I grab a boning knife.  It is long and thin enough to slide into any cut and pop out the chunks of flesh. 

 

For Goop Removal:  A Big Spoon

Pumpkins are full of goop.  Removing that goop goes faster if you have a bigger spoon.  I like one made of metal to scrape the brains guts from the inside of the skull pumpkin.  It is about the same size spoon that the lunch-lady in the high school cafeteria uses.    

 

 

Tools that don’t work so well:

As an experienced killer pumpkin carver, I have tried a number of tools.  Some don’t work very well.  You can save yourself some trouble by not using these. 

 

A dremel tool or roto-zip:  The fibrous nature of muscle tissue pumpkins make it difficult to hold rotary tools in a straight line.  You can hack-up a victim pumpkin, but it is difficult to leave them looking artistic.  

 

Torches, plasma-cutters, any flame cutters:  Since a human body pumpkin is made mostly of water, it can’t be disposed of in the woods burned easily.  Don’t worry though, the fact that they don’t burn allows you to light giant fires inside their head without burning down your porch.