Flaming Pumpkin!!

I was boppin’ around on the internet a little bit ago, looking for some cool pumpkin carving ideas. But what I found went far beyond carving a simple pattern into orange skin; I found something that involves FIRE!

And searching further, it seemed I was behind the times with this activity, as there are several sites that have done this before. Oh well, better late than never.

Items needed; a pumpkin, some kerosene, a roll of toilet paper and a container to soak the TP in.

Well I had a pumpkin already. Let’s see about the other stuff. Toilet paper? Check. A container? Check. Kerosene? Oh yeah baby! Check!

There was a bunch of fine print on the kerosene label, but I figured it wasn’t anything important so I didn’t bother to read it.
Now the instructions said to soak the TP overnight. Ok, that’s easy enough. I poured the kerosene into the can, put the TP in and even weighted it down with a rock to keep it submerged.
I figured a good place to do all this would be outside. Away from my lungs (and away from my furnace’s pilot light!). But some pine needles fell into the mix when I put the rock in, which made me realize that a good protective cover was needed to keep other dirt, leaves and other crap out of my experiment.
All set and ready to go, right? Ahhh, so I thought. The following day arrived and I was too caught up in some other kind of mischief to get my pumpkin carved. The day after that; it rained and a rainy night is no good for filming a flaming gourd, so things were postponed yet again. The night after that…well, I forget what came up, but the pumpkin didn’t get done that night, either. Can you guess where this is headed? Yeah, I didn’t get a chance to carve the pumpkin in time for Halloween. Dammit! Oh well, the pyromania would still be done!

Hmmm…would the TP have held up, or would I be faced with a disintegrated pile of liquid slop? (You’ll be happy to know that things held up wonderfully.)

So there I was; Halloween had passed and I still had the ingredients for something truly cool. So I cleared my schedule for an evening, assembled some tools and hunkered down to see just how well this activity would come together.

A nice skull stencil seemed to be appropriate for the event…
I opted to carve the pumpkin by opening the bottom, rather than the top. This was important, as it would allow me to get the TP situated on the base, and then I could place the carved pumpkin over everything, nice and easy. More importantly, if I needed to get at the flames once things were lit, I could just lift the pumpkin off, rather than having to screw with trying to lift a flaming roll of poop-paper out of a mini-furnace.

Also; I left the sides nice and thick to help keep the pumpkin from drying out too soon, once the flames got going. (It may look like I cut the top off, but I assure you this is the bottom.)
The tools which were used in this creation…
Ta~Da! A skull! (It doesn’t look like much in this pic, but trust me, it looked great in the dark, with the flames going.) Some chimney holes were needed around the top to allow the flames to shoot out of, otherwise everything would shoot out the face/carving and that probably wouldn’t look as cool.
I figured the fire pit would provide a safe area for the lighting ceremony…and then figured a nice mini-stack of cinder blocks would provide a bit more safety.
The TP has been placed and the pumpkin is ready to be placed onto the base.
Here, everything is set and ready to go…
JEEZUS, ENOUGH WITH THE PICS!!! JUST LIGHT THE DAMN THING ALREADY!!!!

Wow, pushy crowd, ain’t ya? Ok, ok, no need to shove. Here ya go…

The flames came up nicely. There was no “WHOOMP” like gas would give you, just a rapid-but-controlled spreading of the burn. Once things were fully going, the flames coming out the top were pretty sweet. Not too high, not out of control, but just really cool, man.

I’ll DEFINITELY be doing this again next year!! Hell, I might carve a SANTA pumpkin and leave that out on my front doorstep for when the Fat Bastard comes by with this year's gift of coal!!

Wheeeee!!!!