World’s Fastest Pumpkin Boat

R/C pumpkin boats: if you have one of these spherical craft, you know that they’re a lot of fun to drive, but they could always be a little bit faster and sometimes experience control issues. On the other hand, there may only be one of these boats in existence. As seen in the pair of videos here, YouTuber William Osman created a custom carving tool, then hacked together a control system based on R/C boating gear to bring this craft to life.

The carver is a modification of his power eraser seen in this video, but it can mount several cutting and jabbing tools instead of an eraser. While it’s an entertaining video, the interesting bit from an engineering perspective is his use of a removable pin in order to quickly change from tool to tool. The resulting build is sort of a reinvention of the jigsaw, as he uses a reciprocating motor from one of these tools in the build.

Finally, in this video he makes his R/C pumpkin boat, which actually seems to work pretty well after some modification of the rudder. In order to keep the water from entering the pumpkin through the propeller assembly, he’s using a homemade stuffing box packed with grease. Both videos are quite entertaining, and if you need inspiration for a wacky Halloween build, these should do quite nicely!