A Halloween Lantern

Once upon a time, the Gaelic and Celtic peoples who had settled in the British Isles believed that the spirits of the dead could cross over into the physical world at the end of October. They dressed in strange costumes to confuse the spirits, and carried lanterns made from hollowed-out vegetables to ward them off. This ancient custom survives today as Halloween, an opportunity to disguise ourselves, decorate our homes in comically scary themes, and celebrate our shared mortality in a way that has become all the more fun for its ridiculous excess.

Here is my contribution to this celebration -- a wooden Halloween Lantern to discourage those evil spirits who are unimpressed by glowing vegetables. I've designed this project to be simple and inexpensive to make -- the lanterns you see are made of common pine and plywood. The only power tools needed are a table saw, hand drill, and saber saw -- in fact, we show you how to convert your hand-held saber saw to a benchtop tool by mounting it to  shop-made worksurface!

You can make several lanterns in a weekend, or mass-produce several dozen in a week. It all depends on how badly your neighborhood is infested with evil spirits. 20 pages in two zipped PDF files, including plans for a saber saw table jig, step-by-step instructions, nine full-size patterns for lantern faces, and measurements in both English/Imperial and Metric units.