yea that was the worst thing for me....and i managed to get it to work but only for a few puffs...im still trying to figure out another way to seal it up....anybody have an idea?
My plan is to buy some sort of semi-rigid clear plastic (like overhead transparency sheet-type plastic, but maybe a bit thicker... maybe like the plastic that comprises 95% of annoying packaging in the gadget market today). Anyways, with that plastic, I'm going to cut out the pieces of the pumpkin that I'm going to carve. I'll then trace around these pieces on the pumpkin. When doing the actual carving, some sort of attempt will be made to try and carve with a bit of a slope inwards, so that the diameter of the holes tapers in slightly. Once the hole is made, I'll push the piece of plastic in, trying to get it to be held tightly by the pumpkin flesh. I'm going to probably end up applying a ring of hot glue around it, but this will be more for air-tight-ness than for structural support, since (as was pointed out before) hot glue isn't that effective on pumpkin flesh.
I haven't tried any of that above. It is my plan though, unless anybody here offers anything better. Like I said, I'll be constructing next Friday, so I've got a week to think of other ideas.