If I burn my jigsaw out, I will do the same. Drilling in sharp corners is a good tip, thanks.
So, when cutting the blank with the saw, I guess the idea is to get close enough to the outline so that the router cutter is taking off much less than it's own diameter in wood, to make it easy? Say, use a 1/2" cutter and try to get the initial saw cut within 1/4" or so? What I'm getting at, is that if too much wood is left to be taken off, you might as well just route through the blank to start with