A few members have asked me to shed some light on my techniques for scratch building. I am honored and humbled to do so. I will be holding a series of classes/seminars on the forum in which I will cover all area's from Getting Started to the fabrication process. I hope you enjoy these threads as they develop. If you have any questions please post so in the pertaining class/seminar discussion.
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The first thing to cover is getting started. To get started you need to develop an idea. Then start to put create a design. The difference between an idea and a design is designs are hard copies of an idea for all to see. An idea is a mere thought, or creation from the depths of your imagination and brain activity of electrical neruon stimulus. A design on the opposite side of the table is the language an idea communicates through.
To create a design you need to take out a piece of paper and sketch. It doesnt matter if you are an amazing artist or cant draw a stick figure, just get some lines down on paper. The eye needs to be trained to see how things are composed. Every piece of matter is composed of shapes. Once you see the shapes in objects it is all down hill from there. If you can see how an object is put together with simple shapes, then you will be an expert scratch builder and designer in no time. The key to scratch building, which cannot be emphasized enough, is seeing how objects are made up of shapes and proportions.
Know to understand something you have to understand the principles behind it. This is why I am covering the fundamentals of scratch building. Without these you will forever be scratching your head. Now behind principles are roots. The roots are the ground for the principles. I will explain how and why seeing shapes inside objects is important. If you can see how an object is made up of shapes, then you will be able to see how to translate that object into a variety of pieces to build up. If you can manipulate the object in your head, or on paper and tear it down into the basic shapes then you can take those shapes and trace them on to your material and build the object. In other words, if you can see the simple shapes in an object, you can see how it was built, then you can figure out how to reconstruct it yourself.
This ability wont come over night. You will train your eye to notice these simple shapes. There are three simple shapes, triangles, ellipses, and rectangles. To train your eye, stare at an object and break it down into those three simple shapes. Then translate it onto paper. This excercise will give you a more keen eye and noticeability to how things are constructed and will be the essential fundamental for scratch building.
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The next lesson will start covering where to go from the design aspect with a few more fundamentals of how to build. I hope you enjoy these classes. Each class will be a step in scratch building. This is the basic formula I follow for each of my builds and I hope it helps you. Thanks.