You plan sounds pretty good.
Here's what I can offer. After the stick is smoothed to a cylinder, trace the top. transfer the circle to some card stock. Cut it in half, and then cut out the half circles to form profiles that can be used to see how close the wood shape is getting to round as the carving progresses. After that, to save some time, I cut the top to half an octagonal profile. From there, I remove smaller amounts. I haven't sawed into the bottom, for fear of going to far, and so the bottom portion is mostly just chipping away.
On my first attempt, when I was still working thru how to seal and season the stick ends, I was about half way done when the splits opened up at the top. Since then, I've tried to have enough extra stick that I can cut the ends away before I start finial work.
Here's what I can offer. After the stick is smoothed to a cylinder, trace the top. transfer the circle to some card stock. Cut it in half, and then cut out the half circles to form profiles that can be used to see how close the wood shape is getting to round as the carving progresses. After that, to save some time, I cut the top to half an octagonal profile. From there, I remove smaller amounts. I haven't sawed into the bottom, for fear of going to far, and so the bottom portion is mostly just chipping away.
On my first attempt, when I was still working thru how to seal and season the stick ends, I was about half way done when the splits opened up at the top. Since then, I've tried to have enough extra stick that I can cut the ends away before I start finial work.