Jigs for more Santa's

I carved another Santa last night, but instead of just showing you the Santa, I've included pictures of the jig I used for cutting the base shape. The initial design came from Wood Carving Illustrated magazine. I built a jig to cut a 12" 2x2 in half, corner to corner, on the bandsaw. As you can see from the picture I took a 2x4 and made 2-45 degree cuts to create a trough to set hold the board stable. I then attached the 2x4 onto a scrap piece of plywood. I feed this slowly into the bandsaw less than ½ of the way into the jig keeping to the center as best I could. With the jig still in place, I powered off the bandsaw and clamped the plywood to the table. After that I slid a 2x2 into the blade and the result is 2 pieces cut corner to corner.

I the cut one of the 12" diagonal pieces into 3 chunks and you can see one of the resulting Santas. Pretty cool.

Enjoy, and be careful of the splinters.