>Awhile ago, I made a clamp to hold B&C feet for carving. I apparently got the sides of the sliding dovetail a bit thin, as it cracked under presure. I still needed something to hold the feet while carving, so I came up with this. I have seen others use a bar clamp with a couple of pieces of wood on the sides of the bar and clamped in a vise. I did it that way for a bit, but the location of my vise puts the bar in an awkward position. I wanted to find a better way to hold the clamp, so I came up with this. I drilled a few holes in the bar, took some scraps of oak that I had laying around and fitted them to the bar. I cut out slots to clear the ridges on the sides so that the bar would have some support for downward pressure. Then I screwed some pieces of wood on the bottom of those blocks with some overhang so that I could clamp it to the bench. Now, I can locate it in a more comfortable position. Mickey mouse, maybe, but it works ;-)
>I don't consider myself a carver, but I play one on TV ;-) I am still early in the learning phase on this stuff. I haven't timed carving one, but it probably takes me about 4-6 hours each after the blanks are sawn out on the bandsaw. I made a bunch of little ones for practice before I tried one of the bigger ones. I probably did about 15 to 20 of the small ones. They are actually harder to do than the bigger ones. I am attaching a link to the first ball and claw project that I tried. They really are not that difficult once you figure out a process that works for you. I would definately recommend practice on cheap wood for the first few. My very first ones looked like a lot of things, but ball and claw was probably not one of them;-)
