Appreciate the help, FWIW the + and - keys on both the numpad, and above the qwerty keys both worked in scaling the manipulators, but the scale manipulator still refused to show up.

I performed a...

eek, this is sounding like a problem with my hardware/software setup, I guess I will try and figure to copy all the geometry from one scene to another, and see if that fixes it.

The scale manipulator is not showing/displaying in the viewport. I trashed ~/My Documents/maya/2012-x64/*, and still do not get the scale manipulator in the maya file. I do however get the scale...

any chance of a video being made for the upper part of the caster?

Alright, I made some updates, gone is the procedural wood texture. I added some bevels to a couple of edges. I also watched the "3 point lighting technique video" and redid the lighting, so this...

Alright, I am no expert with Maya by any means, but eventually if I wanted to land a job using Maya, what would be the quickest route to get working? Is it better to start learning animation...

wouldn't mind seeing a "turbo" button myself. (-.-)

I like it, the stock coming out of the back looks a little steep, i.e. jets downward a little much, but maybe it's just the angle. Other than that it looks really good. I do see a lot of these in...

yeah what he said.

I managed to model a clothes pin, or sometimes referred to as a peg. The peg is modeled to scale being roughly ~ 3 inches. I lit the scene following this tutorial...