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The tool is good, but the batteries don't last all that long if you're doing an intricate pattern. If I had it to do over, I would have bought an electric (corded) powered unit. The bit that comes with it is great.I ended up putting the bit into my husband's electric-powered dremel and carved away.
The cordless tool can be held like a big pencil. By the way, it's a real Dremel high speed tool and not a toy. The included tip is not sharp but will quickly carve hard surfaces like a finger nails, table tops, etc. This carver worked well. Children should be carefully supervised if they use it.
The two speeds help with detailed carving, and large area cutting. The included instructions allow anyone to carve a nice pumpkin. It's true that this tool does not cut holes into the pumpkin, but removes outer skin. You then also need to thin the inside so a candle or light source will shine through.
I PURCHASED THE DREMEL PUMPKIN CARVER FOR MY WIFE WHO LOVES "HOLLOWEEN" AND IS A ARTIST WHO KNOWS HOW TO CARVE, AND OTHER ARTISTIC STUFF. SHE LOVED IT AND MADE SEVERAL PUMPKINS, SOME MAY FIND IT DIFFICULT IF THEY DONT HAVE A ARTISTIC ABILITY BUT WOULD HAVE FUN TRYING.
Put any strain on it and it will oftentimes just cut off, so you've got to coax it back on (turn it off, wait, turn it back on again). We tend to cut more complex carvings/faces/patterns in our pumpkins and I found that using the dremel to trace the pattern into the skin first made it a LOT easier to get the cuts right when I went in with the blade. I purchased this thinking it would be the end-all be-all in pumpkin carving. It made following the pattern really easy. It's not meant for anything tougher than slowly scraping the skin off of a pumpkin (and turning the skin into a messy pulp). Which is, in fact, cutting a design into a pumpkin).BUT, once I lowered my expectations, I found it can be quite useful (albeit in only one respect). (just a note here - the package does say "Tool is intended for carving design not cutting shapes." Since I purchased this online from a site that didn't clarify this, my expectations were admittedly off.
I was really disappointed when I actually used it. Also I was disappointed to see it only came with one bit - if you market something as a carving tool you really should have a bit that does some carving, not just scraping. Just be prepared to clean up a lot of pumpkin pulp. When I see something that says it is for pumpkin CARVING I think of traditional pumpkin carving.
Then a few years ago I picked up the PumpkinMasters electric saw, which cut my carving time in half due to the facts that I didn't have to stop every so often to rest my hand and to the speed at which the saw carves.All in all I'd say this set misses out on five stars due to having only the one bit and a battery pack that could be better designed. But my problem has come in putting it back into the router. And all I really did was to peel off the outer layer of the rind, I didn't dare go to the depth I'd have prefered do to how long it took me to get rid of that much. The one that comes with it I found when I finally had the chance to try it out recently is pretty much good for only one thing. I'm talking taking about twenty-thirty minutes with this vs just three minutes with the other.
As this is probably the smallest bit for this tool that means that sculpting the smallest details would have to be done with something like and Xacto set. But it can't do that with the pencil bit they provide. Four AA batteries placed in a moderately easy to use battery pack mean you don't have to sit near an electrical outlet to operate it.But I find that this set is missing something, like at least one other bit. I'd call the bit a pencil bit personally because it took me longer to sculpt a relatively small area than it would have if I'd used one of the chiseling tools from the Xacto set. I figured that it's rotary tool would do for sculpting what the electric saw had done for carving.What you get when you get this kit is a two speed, hand-held router, a bit, and ten carving templates. As I said, it's moderately easy to use, but it should be easier.
And even when you do get it right it seems to fight you at first, causing you to take it out and try turning it around twice before it will slide and lock. If it were impossible to get other bits for it (the instructions do suggest you can use other bits) then the rating would have been even lower.So as you can imagine, I'm interested in things which make my work faster. There is a slot and key design which lets you slide it into the router. It's easy enough to get it out and pop the batteries into the pack. Had a second, more efficent bit been added I'd rate this set higher than I have. Had this been designed differently the battery pack would be a breeze to use.
Even on low it should be able to cut times down for sculpting a pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern. This was done using a combination PimpkinMasters saws and carving tools for the carved areas and an Xacto set for the sculpted areas. The router fits comfortably in your hand, or at least it does in mine. Until a few years ago it used to take me four to six hours (or more) to carve a jack-o-lantern due to the fact that I liked to carve and sculpt intricate designs into the pumpkin.
Tracing a design. It's trying to figure out which is the larger so the pack will slide in and lock in place. The problem is there seemd to be two slots and keys, one slightly larger than the other. The only other problem I had was the battery pack.
Which was why I bought the Dremel 764-04 Pumpkin Carving Kit. That and the fact that with this pencil bit you've got to stop every few minutes just to wipe away pulp to see how you're progressing.At the same time if you go too small in detail this bit is actually too large to use as it wants to obliterate the design. The router shows great promise in my opinion. As it stands, when I finished carving I did say I'd like to try it again with a different bit.
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