The verdict is in, and the jig is up......

As the title of this post says, the verdict is in, and the jig is up.....WAY up, in fact. If I had a rating system of 0 to 5 with 5 being the best, I'd rate this jig a 10. As you can see, I must confess I've never been that good at math. But, not to worry because I'm not testing myself on this....no way, no how!

The other day, it was warm enough to actually do some serious carving with this jig. Then it got cold....too cold to work in the shop without heat.

Did I mention that turbo jet heater (which I've since found out is a heater with many names) doesn't work very well for a woodworking shop like mine? My fellow Lumberjocks gave me advice on wood stoves and flash explosions, and, based on what they told me, the risk of carbon monoxide is pretty high. That sold me on doing something else for heat.

Today, it was, once again, warm enough outside to make some serious sawdust inside, and that's exactly what I did!

After I got the piece turned upside down from what it was the other day, I could get to work on the bottom half. That involved getting it clamped in....

Lines drawn to guide the carving....

And getting going, and I didn't even need to clamp the jig to the workbench because the weight held it very firmly in place....

Once again, though, after the first flutes were taken down as far as I wanted them to go, the piece had to be tilted at an angle to be able to work on those side flutes....

It took awhile, but mission accomplished was a really good feeling to have.

I should also note that I used a leaf blower in between flute carvings to clear sawdust out of the shop, and that's why there's no sawdust mess in any of the photos....

One other thing that needs mentioning here; my long neck Makita die grinder with coarse round rasp is awesome! That baby gets cradled right in the crook of my right arm as I'm working, and it's steady....man, is it steady for carving. This thing is well worth the price (not telling), and will ultimately come in very handy when I start doing more intricate carving later on. In the meantime, I'm still learning along with honing those carving skills bit by bit.

Well, that's it for today. It's supposed to be warm again tomorrow, but there's a whole lot of other things going on. I guess the next step in this process will have to wait until after the snowstorm we're expecting on Sunday.